What does "schema evolution" enable in Delta Lake?

Schema evolution in Delta Lake allows for the alteration of a table's schema as new data arrives. This capacity is essential for data engineering and analytics processes where the input data schema may change over time. For instance, if new columns are added to incoming data or if existing columns are modified, Delta Lake’s schema evolution feature makes it possible to accommodate these changes without the need to recreate the table or lose existing data.

With schema evolution, users can seamlessly adapt their data structures to fit new requirements, ensuring that they can continue to query and analyze their data without interruption. This functionality greatly enhances flexibility in managing data lakes, enabling organizations to remain agile in a rapidly changing data landscape.

The other choices relate to capabilities not inherent to schema evolution in Delta Lake. Adding new records without schema changes is a standard feature of many data systems but doesn't capture the essence of schema evolution. Changing the database's storage engine is unrelated to schema management, and automatically repairing corrupted data addresses data integrity rather than schema modifications.