Apache Polaris 129 (https://github.com/apache/polaris 2,078 ) is a REST catalog that Snowflake and Dremio 249,796 donated to the Apache Software Foundation in August 2024. It graduated to a top-level project on 19 February 2026 and released 1.8.0 on 28 September 2026 (Apache-2.0, Java on Quarkus); Snowflake runs it as a managed service, Snowflake Open Catalog. Its strength is governance:
Internal and external catalogs. Polaris commits to its own catalogs and exposes others read-only.
Two-tier access control. Privileges such as TABLE_READ_DATA go to catalog roles, catalog roles to principal roles, and those to service principals, so bi_reader means the same in every engine.
Credential vending. Polaris "vends temporary storage credentials to the query engine".
Beyond Iceberg 129 . Generic tables register formats such as Delta Lake 237,929 , policies attach maintenance rules, and 1.8.0 added an endpoint for OpenLineage events (Anomalies, Contracts, Lineage).
Polaris is not run here; Lakekeeper plays the same role in a far smaller footprint.