Among the available open table formats that enable lakehouses — such as Apache Iceberg, Delta and Hudi — no clear winner has emerged. Instead, we’re seeing tooling to enable interoperability between these formats. Delta UniForm, for example, enables single-directional interoperability by allowing Hudi and Iceberg clients to read Delta tables. Another new entrant to this space is Apache XTable™, an Apache incubator project that facilitates omnidirectional interoperability across Hudi, Delta and Iceberg. Like UniForm, it converts metadata among these formats without creating a copy of the underlying data. XTable could be useful for teams experimenting with multiple table formats. However, for long-term use, given the difference in the features of these formats, relying heavily on omnidirectional interoperability could result in teams only being able to use the "least common denominator" of features.
