Configure Delta Lake Deletion Vectors to enable row-level deletes without full Parquet file rewrites

Steps

1. Enable Deletion Vectors on the table: ALTER TABLE delta.`/path/to/table` SET TBLPROPERTIES ('delta.enableDeletionVectors' = 'true'); this requires Delta protocol version 3.
2. Execute a DELETE or UPDATE statement on specific rows; Delta will write a small deletion vector (DV) sidecar file marking deleted row positions rather than rewriting the entire Parquet file.
3. Confirm DVs are in use by running DESCRIBE HISTORY delta.`/path/to/table` and looking for operationMetrics indicating deletionVectorsAdded or numDeletionVectorsAdded.
4. Inspect the files metadata to see which data files have associated deletion vectors: SELECT path, deletionVector FROM delta.`/path/to/table`.__delta_log (or via Delta DeltaLog internals).
5. Periodically run OPTIMIZE to materialize pending DVs into clean Parquet files, preventing read overhead from accumulating too many DV-annotated files.