Share foreign Delta tables with OpenSharing in Databricks

The ability to share foreign Delta tables using OpenSharing is now generally available (GA). Providers can expose federated tables from external sources to recipients through Unity Catalog without needing to move or copy data into Databricks.

Use cases

Imagine you maintain data in external storage systems and need to make it available to partners or customers securely. With this feature, you can:

• Share federated tables from OneLake, AWS Glue, or Hive metastore.
• Avoid the cost and complexity of data duplication.
• Manage access centrally via Unity Catalog.

How to use

To add a foreign table to an existing share, run the following SQL command in a Databricks notebook or the SQL query editor:

ALTER SHARE my_share ADD TABLE my_catalog.my_schema.my_foreign_table;

What happens in this code:

1. The ALTER SHARE command modifies an existing share object in Unity Catalog.
2. The ADD TABLE clause specifies that a table asset is being added.
3. The fully qualified path my_catalog.my_schema.my_foreign_table points to the federated table you want to expose.

Limitations and requirements

• This feature is generally available (GA).
• Requires the CREATE SHARE privilege to create the share, along with USE CATALOG, USE SCHEMA, and SELECT privileges on the underlying data assets.
• Shares and their assets must reside within the same Unity Catalog metastore.