metadata bloat can be due to a few things, but it’s manageable. * number of snapshots * frequent large schema changes * lots of small files/row level updates

metadata bloat can be due to a few things, but it’s manageable. * number of snapshots * frequent large schema changes * lots of small files/row level updates * lots of stats The last one IIRC used to be pretty bad especially with larger schemas. Most engines have ways to help with this - compaction, snapshot exportation, etc… Though it can still be up to the user. S3 tables is supposed to do some of this for you. If metadata is below 1-5MB it’s really not an issue. Your commit rate is effectively limited by the size of your metadata and the number of writers you have. I’ve written scripts to fix 1GB+ metadata files in production. Usually it was pruning snapshots without deleting files (relying on bucket policy to later clean things up) or removing old schema versions.