apache / apache/iceberg-python

Add `VariantType`

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V3
Dominant language
Python
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Description

### Feature Request / Improvement

The VariantType is a semi-structured type that's part of V3.

- Hopefully, the Parquet format will be released soon: https://lists.apache.org/thread/mr8krzdy8qslhhy5zbll53fd2hy6cpwg
- Once that's in, I'll be added to Arrow: https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/45375
- I think for PyIceberg, we need to wait for PyArrow support.

There is a Python implementation in Spark that we could vendor into the project, but that will be pretty slow: https://github.com/apache/spark/blob/master/python/pyspark/sql/variant_utils.py

Thoughts?

Original proposal: https://github.com/apache/iceberg/issues/10392

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by checking the linked Parquet and Arrow work to determine whether the required VariantType support is available, then read Spark's python/pyspark/sql/variant_utils.py as the referenced implementation. Done means PyIceberg has an agreed VariantType implementation path once the PyArrow dependency supports it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python, spark
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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