Hey all: I would like to reach out to the Iceberg community to seek input and thoughts on PR 14504, which proposes changing the behavior of table metadata's last updated timestamp.
This was discussed yesterday on the Iceberg community sync. The current Java SDK implementation ties the `last-updated-ms` field in TableMetadata to the snapshot creation timestamp when the snapshot was added. Ryan shared his initial motivation but also indicated that he's open to change. We also confirmed that the last-updated-at timestamp in TableMetadata is purely informational and provides no guarantee. Unlinking timestamps allows them to reflect their own state, particularly given the separation of concerns between the engine's role of authoring snapshots and the catalog's role of writing metadata.json. Looking forward to your feedback. https://github.com/apache/iceberg/pull/14504 Thanks, Hongyue
