[IMPALA-10288] Functionality to display table history for Iceberg tables

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: Impala 4.0.0
• Component/s: Frontend
• Epic Color: ghx-label-8
• Assignee: Gabor Kaszab
• Reporter: Gabor Kaszab
• Created: 27/Oct/20 10:50
• Updated: 24/Nov/20 07:20
• Resolved: 24/Nov/20 07:20

Description

For time travel it would be useful to display the table history (previous snapshot, creation times etc.) so that the user can pick which snapshot to use.

Spark already has this functionality:
https://iceberg.apache.org/spark/#time-travel

SELECT * FROM prod.db.table.history

+-------------------------+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| made_current_at         | snapshot_id         | parent_id           | is_current_ancestor |
+-------------------------+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| 2019-02-08 03:29:51.215 | 5781947118336215154 | NULL                | true                |
| 2019-02-08 03:47:55.948 | 5179299526185056830 | 5781947118336215154 | true                |
| 2019-02-09 16:24:30.13  | 296410040247533544  | 5179299526185056830 | false               |
| 2019-02-09 16:32:47.336 | 2999875608062437330 | 5179299526185056830 | true                |
| 2019-02-09 19:42:03.919 | 8924558786060583479 | 2999875608062437330 | true                |
| 2019-02-09 19:49:16.343 | 6536733823181975045 | 8924558786060583479 | true                |
+-------------------------+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+

We can have the same output columns for the Impala implementation, however, the actual syntax to run the query is not decided yet.

There are various solutions on the field:
1) SELECT * from tablename.history; (Spark)
2) DESCRIBE HISTORY tablename; (Delta)
3) select * from 'table.history'; (Presto)