Limit the delete file/records

[Shekharrajak]

Feature Request / Improvement

Currently I do not see any limit parameter for delete query in Java API.

• If there is huge table, it might get stuck or never complete.
• Can we limit number based on number of data file removal ?
• What if there is few rows matching the expression condition but not all , will that delete the data file ?

Anyone have suggestion if it has already discussed ?

Query engine

None

Willingness to contribute

• I can contribute this improvement/feature independently
• I would be willing to contribute this improvement/feature with guidance from the Iceberg community
• I cannot contribute this improvement/feature at this time

[bharos]

• Can we limit number based on number of data file removal ?
  In this case, I'm wondering what will be the outcome of the API call? Won't it can cause partial deletes if we do something like this.

This should depend on the table config

write.delete.mode | copy-on-write | Mode used for delete commands: copy-on-write or merge-on-read (v2 only)

If it's copy-on-write, it will rewrite the datafiles, for merge-on-read the changes are written to a new file.

My understanding is that delete API will not remove the actual files from object storage until table maintenance operations are invoked