Object locking applies retention or deletion restrictions to storage objects. It helps protect Iceberg data and metadata files from deletion or overwriting, supporting compliance, fault tolerance, and recovery requirements. section 5.4.6 section 5.5.3
Use object locking when storage integrity requires:
- Preventing deletions or overwrites during a defined retention period. section 5.5.3
- Supporting legal, archival, or regulatory requirements for immutability and tamper resistance. section 5.5.3
- Reducing the impact of ransomware, accidental overwrites, or destructive misconfiguration when combined with object versioning. section 11.3.2
Long-term retention
A government agency retains historical Iceberg records for more than a decade. Object locking with WORM policies prevents deletion or overwriting during the required period, while bucket-level compliance controls can enforce the policy. section 5.5.3
Figure 11.4 With object versioning, if an object is corrupted or lost, you can revert to the previous version of the object. Here, the object is a data or metadata file in storage.
Inspect how object versioning supports recovery by retaining previous data or metadata-file versions alongside immutable storage policies. section 11.3.2
