Thanks much for the help.

1. Yes, the job is run on 16.4 LTS.

2. ANALYZE TABLE csu_metastore_dev.iceberg.big_file_hcm COMPUTE DELTA STATISTICS

    the output is just one line: ANALYZE TABLE csu_metastore_dev.iceberg.big_file_hcm COMPUTE DELTA STATISTICS was successfully executed.

    we have limited knowledge on using Databricks, please advise what else I can run and provide more info.

3. ALTER TABLE table_name CLUSTER BY NONE

     Don't know what this will help my case. I have problem to create iceberg table with option partitionedBy, and this command 'alter' need table to be created first. 

4. btw, ChatGPT summarized my issue, not sure if this is true.

Root Cause

• Unity Catalog appears to default to Delta Lake logic, even when USING ICEBERG is specified
• If PARTITIONED BY (...) is included, UC treats it as a Delta Lake clustering directive, which expects column-level stats
• Since your column didn’t have Delta-style stats yet (as Iceberg doesn’t require them), Databricks throws a misleading Delta error — despite your intent to use Iceberg

Why This Is Misleading

• The error references Delta Liquid Clustering, which is a Delta Lake–only feature
• But you are explicitly creating the table with USING ICEBERG
• Your ingest_date column did exist in the data — but it failed anyway
  This implies that:
  Even when specifying USING ICEBERG, Databricks internally applies Delta validations, including Liquid Clustering checks, especially when using Unity Catalog.