Generic Table Support in Apache Polaris

[gh-yzou]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Apache Polaris currently only functions as a catalog for Apache Iceberg tables through the Iceberg REST Catalog API. However, many users or engines (i.e. Apache Spark, Trino, Snowflake etc) also work with other table formats like Delta. In order for Polaris to provide better interoperability across different engines, we should provide the capability for Polaris to manage non-Iceberg tables, which we call Generic Table in Polaris. Generic table entities could be used in different engines based on their specific capabilities.

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[gh-yzou]

Here is a link to the proposal https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_R9jBIwoH3CV9G7gSoRJPQVEcOsROp4IEiGoeYeQE8A/edit?tab=t.0