Apache Iceberg introduces the concept of hidden partitioning where the reading of unnecessary partitions can be avoided automatically. Data consumers that fire the queries don’t need to know how the table is partitioned and add extra filters to their queries.
A table can be defined as an arrangement of data in rows and columns and in a similar fashion, if you visualize from the Big Data perspective, the large number of individual files that hold the actual data can be organized in a tabular manner too.