Credential vending is a catalog-controlled security pattern that issues short-lived, scoped credentials to query engines or clients. The credentials permit access only to storage paths required for an authorized query or job, then expire automatically. section 7.2.2 section 7.6
The catalog remains the authority for identities, roles, namespaces, tables, and operations. Engines authenticate to the catalog rather than receiving long-lived object-storage credentials, centralizing governance and reducing blast radius, credential-management overhead, and audit complexity. section 7.2.2 section 7.6
A practical credential-vending flow typically includes:
- Authenticate a user, service principal, or query engine with the catalog. section 7.4.10
- Evaluate catalog permissions through roles assigned at catalog, namespace, or table scope. section 7.4.4
- Issue temporary credentials limited to the authorized storage locations and operation. section 7.6
- Allow the engine to read or write the required table data without exposing permanent storage credentials. section 7.4.10
Multi-engine lakehouse access
A Spark ETL job, Flink ingestion pipeline, and Trino BI workload use service principals with scoped catalog privileges. Each engine receives temporary storage credentials at runtime, while the catalog preserves consistent access rules across shared Iceberg tables. section 7.4.10 section 7.4.4
Credential vending works best with non-overlapping storage locations and fine-grained catalog authorization. It does not, by itself, standardize row-level or column-level security; those catalog-level mechanisms remain under development across the Iceberg ecosystem. section 7.4.7 section 7.6
