Understanding the Value of Dremio as the Open and Intelligent Lakehouse Platform

Teams are wrestling with a familiar set of headaches, data scattered across different systems, costly and complex pipelines to move and replicate that data, and siloed tools that don’t speak the same language. As the pace of innovation accelerates, these challenges only grow, making it harder to derive timely, trustworthy insights.

This is where the concept of the lakehouse enters the scene, promising to blend the best of both data lakes and data warehouses, flexibility, scalability, and structure. But not all lakehouses are created equal.

To truly unlock the promise of the lakehouse, openness is key. That means being able to access data wherever it lives, work with any tool in your stack, and avoid vendor lock-in that limits your future options. This is where Dremio shines.

Dremio is more than just a lakehouse platform, it's an open and intelligent lakehouse. And what makes Dremio truly open are the three core interfaces that connect everything together:

1. Federation Interface – Seamlessly query and model data across all your sources without moving it.
2. Iceberg Interface – Manage open Apache Iceberg tables that plug into the broader ecosystem of data tools.
3. Consumption Interface – Deliver secure, governed, and high-performance data access to any user or application.

In this blog, we’ll break down each of these interfaces to show how Dremio empowers teams to build modern, flexible, and future-proof data platforms, with less complexity and more freedom.

The Federation Interface – Unifying Disparate Data with Ease

Imagine if you could query every data source in your organization; databases, data lakes, catalogs without copying a single byte of data. That’s the power of data federation, and Dremio does it exceptionally well through its Source Connectors.

Think of Dremio as a universal translator for your data. Whether it’s structured, semi-structured, or deeply nested—Dremio speaks its language and brings it into a unified, queryable experience.

What Dremio Connects To

Dremio’s federation interface is built to integrate with virtually every type of data system, including:

• Databases and Data Warehouses – From traditional relational databases to modern cloud-native warehouses.
• Files on Data Lakes – Including formats like Iceberg, Delta Lake, Parquet, CSV, JSON, and even Excel files (XLS).
• AWS Glue and Hive Catalogs – For direct access to Iceberg and Parquet datasets registered in your existing metadata catalogs.
• Iceberg REST-Compatible Iceberg Catalogs – Such as Apache Polaris (Dremio’s native implementation), Databricks Unity Catalog, Apache Gravitino, LakeKeeper, and Open Catalog.
• Dremio’s Integrated Catalog – Powered by Polaris, this catalog automatically optimizes Iceberg tables for performance.

Why It Matters

With this federation interface, you don’t need to build complex ETL pipelines or replicate data to a central warehouse. Dremio lets you:

• Query data in-place across diverse systems.
• Create a semantic layer that spans all your sources.
• Avoid data duplication and reduce infrastructure costs.

This approach turns your existing architecture into a coherent, queryable whole—allowing analysts, data scientists, and engineers to work with live data no matter where it resides.

The Iceberg Interface – Managing Open Table Formats Intelligently

If data is the new oil, then table formats are the refineries. They structure, optimize, and make raw data usable for modern analytics. Among these formats, Apache Iceberg has emerged as the gold standard—open, scalable, and designed for the cloud.

Dremio doesn’t just support Iceberg—it’s built to thrive on it. Through its integration with Apache Polaris, Dremio offers a powerful Iceberg experience that combines openness with intelligence.

What’s Under the Hood

Dremio’s integrated catalog is powered by Polaris, a native community-driven open source implementation of the Iceberg REST Catalog interface. This means any table you manage in Dremio isn’t locked in—it’s fully accessible to the broader Iceberg ecosystem.

That includes tools like:

• Apache Spark for large-scale batch ingestion
• Confluent and Redpanda for real-time streaming into Iceberg tables
• Apache Flink and others for processing and querying

Even better, Dremio automatically optimizes tables created in its catalog—handling compaction, file sizing, and more behind the scenes.

Why It Matters

This interface makes Dremio a true citizen of the Iceberg ecosystem. You get:

• Interoperability with best-of-breed tools
• Future-proofed data that won’t be stuck in a vendor-specific format
• Performance and simplicity from automated table optimization

It’s like having a state-of-the-art smart home—open to any device, easy to manage, and designed to evolve with your needs.

The Consumption Interface – Open Access for Any Tool, Any Language

Having access to all your data and managing it in an open format is powerful—but it’s only half the story. The real magic happens when you can deliver that data securely and efficiently to every tool and user across your organization, without creating bottlenecks or custom workarounds.

That’s the job of Dremio’s Consumption Interface—the final piece that turns a powerful backend into a truly usable platform.

One Semantic Layer to Rule Them All

At the heart of Dremio’s consumption model is the semantic layer. This is where you model your data warehouse on top of your federated sources, defining views that provide business-friendly abstractions and logic. But it’s not just about structure—it’s also about governance.

• RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) ensures the right people see the right data.
• FGAC (Fine-Grained Access Control) allows row- and column-level rules for sensitive data.
• These rules are portable across tools via Dremio’s catalog, ensuring consistency no matter how or where the data is consumed.

Access Your Data Anywhere

Once your semantic layer is in place, Dremio makes it openly accessible through multiple channels:

• JDBC/ODBC drivers for traditional BI tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Looker.
• REST APIs for custom applications and scripting in any programming language.
• Apache Arrow Flight for ultra-fast data transfer, especially useful in data science notebooks and real-time applications.

This means whether you're building dashboards, training machine learning models, or automating workflows, you can do it all on one governed, consistent data foundation.

Why It Matters

The Consumption Interface eliminates the need to create bespoke data extracts for every tool or user. Instead, you:

• Reduce redundancy and risk
• Maintain a single source of governed truth
• Empower every persona—analyst, engineer, scientist, or stakeholder—with easy access to the data they need

It's like having a data vending machine that always dispenses clean, curated, and compliant data—regardless of what kind of application or language you're using.

Bringing It All Together – The Truly Open Lakehouse

Let’s step back and look at the big picture.

By combining the Federation Interface, Iceberg Interface, and Consumption Interface, Dremio creates an open and intelligent lakehouse platform—one that’s not just technically robust, but strategically liberating.

You get a system where:

• Data stays where it lives—no need to duplicate or migrate.
• Open table formats like Iceberg ensure future compatibility and tooling flexibility.
• A governed semantic layer makes data secure and consistent across teams and tools.
• Every tool, language, or user can access data without friction or compromise.

The Result? Freedom, Speed, and Simplicity

With Dremio, you’re not locked into a specific vendor’s ecosystem. You’re not waiting on data engineering teams to build yet another pipeline. You’re not struggling with inconsistent definitions across departments.

Instead, you’re empowering your teams to move fast, explore freely, and build confidently, on a platform that was designed for interoperability from day one.

This is what it means to be truly open in the lakehouse era.

Learn more about Dremio by trying Dremio for free.