Iceberg v3's Variant type: semi-structured data, no flattening or JSON-string pain
Iceberg v3 adds Variant, a compact binary column type for JSON-like data that keeps native types (timestamps, decimals, binary) intact while letting fields evolve without schema migrations. No more parsing whole JSON strings for one field or flattening every new key into a schema change; shredding of hot fields into typed columnar data lands in Parquet.