Supported surface and limits
This page lists what is supported in the current Icebreaker release. Items marked planned are on the roadmap but not available in early-adopter access. Items marked not validated are expected to work but have not been confirmed end-to-end — reach out to your Icebreaker contact if you are piloting one.
Clouds
Section titled “Clouds”| Cloud | Status |
|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Supported |
| Google Cloud (GCP) | Planned |
| Microsoft Azure | Planned |
Region availability within AWS is verified per early adopter during onboarding. A public region list will be published once it is stable; for now, confirm region support with your Icebreaker contact.
Kubernetes
Section titled “Kubernetes”| Distribution | Status |
|---|---|
| Amazon EKS | Supported |
| Other Kubernetes distributions | Not validated |
Karpenter is required for Capacity Policy-based pod scheduling. Without Karpenter installed, the Icebreaker Agent runs but cannot provision capacity per query.
Iceberg catalogs
Section titled “Iceberg catalogs”Icebreaker integrates with catalogs that implement the Iceberg REST Catalog specification.
| Catalog | Status |
|---|---|
| Lakekeeper | Validated end-to-end |
| AWS Glue (Iceberg integration) | Expected to work, not validated |
| Apache Polaris | Expected to work, not validated |
| Snowflake Open Catalog (managed Polaris) | Expected to work, not validated |
| Other Iceberg REST-compatible catalogs | Expected to work, not validated |
If you are piloting with a catalog marked “expected to work,” reach out — we want to help you confirm it.
Source file formats
Section titled “Source file formats”| Format | Status |
|---|---|
| Parquet | Validated |
Icebreaker’s planning and execution path is validated against Parquet. If you need support for another Iceberg-compatible format, reach out to your Icebreaker contact.
SQL surface
Section titled “SQL surface”Icebreaker executes SQL using DataFusion as the embedded query engine. The SQL surface follows DataFusion’s dialect.
Supported:
SELECT,FROM,WHERE,GROUP BY,ORDER BY,LIMIT,OFFSET.- Inner, left, right, and full outer joins.
- Standard aggregations (
COUNT,SUM,AVG,MIN,MAX). - Window functions.
- Standard scalar functions: arithmetic, string, date/time.
- Common Iceberg-specific operations: time-travel queries, snapshot inspection.
- CTEs (
WITH).
Notable gaps:
- Statement-level transactions are not supported (Icebreaker is a query engine, not a transactional database).
- Some DDL operations (e.g.,
CREATE INDEX) are not applicable to the Iceberg model. - A current list of unsupported functions and operators is maintained with your Icebreaker contact.
Dialect notes:
- Identifier quoting follows DataFusion defaults (double quotes for identifiers, single quotes for strings).
- Type coercion follows DataFusion; some Iceberg-to-DataFusion type mappings may differ from other engines.
Connection URLs
Section titled “Connection URLs”Each Data Server exposes an Arrow Flight SQL endpoint. The Admin console surfaces it in two forms.
gRPC connection URL
Section titled “gRPC connection URL”The raw Arrow Flight SQL endpoint, used by native Arrow Flight SQL clients. Format depends on your Icebreaker Agent’s ingress mode:
| Ingress mode | gRPC URL format |
|---|---|
| nginx with TLS | grpc+tls://{data_server_id}.{ingress-domain}:443 |
| nginx without TLS | grpc://{data_server_id}.{ingress-domain}:80 |
| AWS ALB | grpc+tls://{elb-hostname}:50051 |
The token is passed separately by native gRPC clients, typically as an Authorization: Bearer {token} header.
JDBC URL
Section titled “JDBC URL”Same endpoint, formatted for JDBC clients. The token is embedded as a query parameter so most JDBC clients can connect by pasting the URL alone.
jdbc:arrow-flight-sql://{host}:{port}/?useEncryption=true&token={token}| Component | Meaning |
|---|---|
{host} | The host from the gRPC URL (no protocol prefix). |
{port} | The port from the gRPC URL. |
useEncryption=true | Always set for TLS-enabled Data Servers. |
token={token} | The Data Server token. The Arrow Flight SQL JDBC driver presents it as a bearer credential. |
Limits
Section titled “Limits”| Resource | Limit |
|---|---|
| Concurrent queries per Data Server | Governed by Capacity Policy capacity and node availability |
| Query plan size | No fixed hard limit; very large plans may be rejected for memory reasons |
| Result set size | Limited by results bucket capacity |
| Capacity Policies per Icebreaker Agent | No fixed limit (governed by Kubernetes namespace and Karpenter NodePool limits) |
| Data Servers per Icebreaker Agent | No fixed limit |
| Icebreaker Agents per Account | No fixed limit |
Concrete per-environment limits depend on your Capacity Policy configuration and your AWS account quotas. Your Icebreaker contact can help validate sizing for your specific workload.
Not supported today
Section titled “Not supported today”- Spark-style distributed transformations — Icebreaker focuses on SQL workloads.
- Direct write-back to source tables — query results are written to a results bucket; updates to source tables go through your existing ingest pipeline.
- Self-service account provisioning — Admin console access is granted manually during the early-adopter program.
- Non-AWS cloud accounts — GCP and Azure support is planned.