Share foreign schemas and tables with OpenSharing

Use cases

Imagine you need to make federated data from external sources available to partners or other environments without duplicating storage. With this feature, you can:

• Share foreign schemas and foreign tables directly.
• Avoid physical data copying into Databricks.
• Allow recipients to read federated data via OpenSharing.

How to use

You can create a share object and add foreign assets using the ALTER SHARE command via SQL.

ALTER SHARE my_share ADD TABLE my_catalog.my_schema.my_foreign_table;

What happens in this code:

1. The ALTER SHARE command modifies the existing share named my_share.
2. The ADD TABLE clause adds the specified table to the share.
3. The full path identifies the source federated table.

Limitations and requirements

• This feature is generally available (GA).
• Sharing foreign schemas and tables materializes data on the provider's side, which incurs compute and storage costs.
• Appropriate Unity Catalog permissions (CREATE SHARE, USE CATALOG, USE SCHEMA, SELECT) are required to manage and add the assets.