Alex Merced - Open Standards and Lakehouse AI Development - Arrow Flight, Apache Iceberg and MCP

Alex Merced is Head of DevRel for Dremio and co-author of "Apache Iceberg: The definitive guide" from O'reilly and has worked as a developer and instructor for companies like GenEd Systems, Crossfield Digital, CampusGuard and General Assembly.

RSVP

Open Standards and Lakehouse AI Development - Arrow Flight, Apache Iceberg and MCP

As AI development shifts toward more agentic and composable workloads, the modern data lakehouse must rise to meet new demands — performance, interoperability, and intelligent access to resources.

We’ll focus on three key technologies:

Arrow Flight – A high-performance data transfer protocol that enables low-latency, columnar data sharing between engines, perfect for real-time AI pipelines.

Apache Iceberg REST Catalog Spec – A critical standard that allows diverse tools and systems to communicate seamlessly with Iceberg catalogs, enabling broader compatibility and easier integration.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) – A new standard that empowers AI agents to discover and leverage available tools, datasets, and prompts in a structured, contextual way.

Together, these standards form the backbone of an open and flexible lakehouse ecosystem — enabling fast data movement, cross-system compatibility, and intelligent AI-agent orchestration.