Unity Catalog is a unified governance solution for all data and AI assets including files, tables, machine learning models and dashboards in your lakehouse on any cloud.
Centralized governance for data and AI
With a common governance model based on ANSI SQL, centrally govern files, tables, dashboards and ML models on any cloud.
Built-in data search and discovery
Quickly find, understand and reference data from across your data estate, boosting productivity.
Performance and scale
Benefit from enhanced query performance with low-latency metadata serving and auto-tuning of the tables.
Automated lineage for all workloads
Create a unified, transparent view of your entire data ecosystem with automated and granular lineage for all workloads in SQL, R, Python, Scala and across all asset types — tables, notebooks, workflows and dashboards.
Integrated with your existing tools
Future-proof your data and AI governance with the flexibility to leverage your existing data catalogs and governance solutions.
How it works
Centrally manage and govern all data assets
With a common governance model based on open standard ANSI SQL, simplify governance for files, tables, dashboards and ML models on any cloud. Define access policies once at the account level and enforce across all workloads and workspaces. Unity Catalog also provides centralized fine-grained auditing by capturing an audit log of actions performed against the data and helps you meet your compliance and audit requirements.
Manage fine-grained access controls
Use standard SQL functions to define row filters and column masks, allowing fine-grained access controls on rows and columns. As Databricks continues to build out capabilities to improve scalability and integration, upcoming attribute-based access controls will enable you to define access policies based on custom tags (attributes).
Unified and secure data search experience
Quickly find, understand and reference relevant data from across your data estate with a unified data search experience for data analysts, data engineers and data scientists. Data search in Unity Catalog is secure by default, limiting search results based on the access privileges of users, and adding an additional layer of security for privacy considerations.
Enhanced query performance at any scale
Unity Catalog provides enhanced query performance with low-latency metadata serving and table auto-tuning, resulting in faster executions of queries at any scale. Asynchronous automatic data compaction optimizes file sizes and reduces input/output (I/O) latency automatically in the background.
Automated and real-time data lineage
Gain end-to-end visibility into how data flows in your lakehouse with automated and real-time data lineage across all workloads in SQL, Python, Scala and R. Quickly perform data quality checks, complete impact analysis of data changes, and debug any errors in your data pipelines. Benefit from lineage across tables, columns, notebooks, workflows and dashboards. Lineage graphs in Unity Catalog are privilege-aware, restricting access to lineage graphs based on the access privileges of users. Lineage can also be retrieved via REST API to support integrations with other catalogs.
Secure data sharing across organizations
Unity Catalog natively supports Delta Sharing, the world’s first open protocol for secure data sharing, enabling you to easily share existing data in Delta Lake and Apache Parquet formats to any computing platform. Consumers don’t have to be on the Databricks platform, same cloud or any cloud at all. You can share live data, without replicating or copying it to another system. Native integrations with Power BI, Tableau, Spark, pandas and Java allow recipients to consume shared data directly from the tools of their choice. You can centrally manage, govern, audit and track usage of the shared data on one platform.
Seamless integrations with your existing tools
Unity Catalog works with your existing data catalogs, data storage systems and governance solutions so you can leverage your existing investments and build a future-proof governance model without expensive migration costs.
Data and cloud storage
Data governance and catalog partners
Customers
“Unity Catalog helped us simplify data management and access controls across the company. The Compass data team has securely onboarded 100+ data sources, migrated all workspaces to Unity Catalog, and created a gold layer for key stakeholders to tap into, to gain insights into areas like customer, product, usage, revenue, and more — creating a single source of truth, with complete access controls across the company.”
“Unity Catalog significantly simplified our implementation of role-based access control, allowing us to secure data at a catalog, database, table and column level. We seamlessly provision the appropriate level of access to all users and can confidently manage and secure data access to meet our strict compliance and privacy policies.”
“Unity Catalog has allowed Milliman to tie its expansive data assets directly to its users, simplifying access management and reducing storage complexity. Unity Catalog allows Milliman to meet stringent health care standards, provide collaborative data exploration and reduce storage complexity. With Unity Catalog, we can quickly scale to meet our clients’ needs.”
“Unity Catalog is enabling us to build a next-generation platform that unlocks the full potential of software-defined vehicles that evolve and improve as they rack up miles – enhancing the driving experience for customers and maximizing the environmental benefits of electrified transportation. We now have a centralized data catalog and access management across various teams and workspaces, which has opened up unprecedented opportunities for collaboration and innovation.”
“Unity Catalog has been a game changer for us. Our analysts can access AWS external tables in real time in Databricks workspaces and can join them with Delta Lake tables. It gives us the performance benefits of Databricks SQL without migrating Glue tables. With Unity Catalog, various teams can collaborate with each other without moving the data from one place to another.”
