Turns out "Iceberg is open" doesn't mean every engine can actually read your table

Read something this week that put a name to a problem I've half run into before but never really understood the mechanics of. Sharing because I think a lot of people assume Iceberg interop is more solved than it is. Everyone knows the pitch: Iceberg is an open spec, so any Iceberg compatible engine can read any Iceberg table. Mostly true, until you start doing row level deletes, and then it falls apart in a way that's honestly kind of sneaky because nothing looks wrong until a query actually fails. Quick walkthrough of the scenario in the post. You've got a customers table, three rows, one Par