Unity AI Gateway vs Apache Polaris Control Planes

This article provides a technical analysis comparing Unity AI Gateway and Apache Polaris control planes for enterprise governance in modern lakehouse architectures. It emphasizes the distinction between gateway governance (managing AI prompts, tools, and agent policies) and catalog governance (controlling table-level identity, metadata, and access via open standards like Apache Iceberg). The author warns against conflating these layers, which can lead to incomplete coverage or redundant controls. Grounded in Apache Polaris documentation and the Iceberg REST catalog spec, the article offers architectural patterns, production examples, common failure modes, and operational checklists for engineers, data owners, and executives. It recommends separating governance responsibilities by layer and advocates for open catalog control over closed AI gateways for scalable, auditable data governance.