Checkpoint V2

Checkpoint V2 allows Delta Lake to support more concurrent writers and reduces write conflicts on large or frequently updated tables.

Delta Lake periodically writes checkpoints that record the state of the transaction log. Checkpoints speed up query planning by allowing Delta Lake to reconstruct table state without replaying the full transaction log.

You can read and write tables with checkpoint V2 in Databricks Runtime 13.3 LTS and above.

For the open-source protocol specification, see checkpoint V2 in the Delta Lake protocol.

Enable checkpoint V2

Enable checkpoint V2 at the table level.

Automatic enablement

Tables created with liquid clustering in Databricks Runtime 14.1 and above use checkpoint V2 by default. See Compatibility for tables with liquid clustering.

Automatic feature enablement (AFE) can automatically turn on checkpoint V2 for Unity Catalog managed tables. See Automatic feature enablement.

Manual enablement

To enable checkpoint V2 on an existing Delta Lake table:

SQL

ALTER TABLE table_name SET TBLPROPERTIES ('delta.checkpointPolicy' = 'v2');

To enable checkpoint V2 on a new Delta Lake table:

SQL

CREATE TABLE table_name (...)
TBLPROPERTIES ('delta.checkpointPolicy' = 'v2');

Optionally, you can manually trigger a checkpoint. See REORG TABLE.

Downgrade to classic

To downgrade a table to classic checkpoints and fully remove checkpoint V2:

SQL

ALTER TABLE table_name DROP FEATURE v2Checkpoint;

See Drop a Delta Lake table feature and downgrade table protocol.