Catalog

In the Ultra Transcenders books

DP-750SC-300

Each book explains Catalog in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• FIRST

  A DAX function available only inside visual calculations. It fetches the value at the start of one axis of the visual's matrix, which makes it handy for comparing each point with the first; its opposite is LAST.

• Unity Catalog

  Azure Databricks' governance solution covering both data and AI in one place, with centralised permissions, auditing, data discovery and lineage.

• Flow

  The unit of work inside a Lakeflow pipeline that takes data from a source, transforms it and lands it in a destination like a streaming table. Streaming flows either append or update, and CREATE FLOW lets you declare a flow apart from the table it feeds.

• Schema

  The middle part of a Unity Catalog name (catalog.schema.table), grouping tables, views, volumes, functions and models inside a catalog. A grant on it covers everything in it now and later, and nothing inside can be reached without USE SCHEMA.

• CONTAINS

  Searches columns with a full-text index for words, phrases, prefixes, inflected forms or synonyms; you use it as a predicate in WHERE.

Related terms

• ABAC policy

  Governed tags drive this kind of Unity Catalog rule: when a table or column has tags that satisfy its WHEN and MATCH COLUMNS conditions, a row filter or column mask UDF is put on it automatically. Policies are written with CREATE POLICY and can sit on a metastore, catalog, schema or table.

• Access package assignment manager

  An entitlement management role, scoped to a catalog, whose holders can add users to or remove them from access packages that already exist. They cannot create or change the packages themselves or the policies attached to them.

• Access package manager

  Holders of this catalog-level entitlement management role design new access packages, alter existing ones and set their policies, drawing only on resources that are already in that catalog; bringing extra resources in is beyond them.

• Apache Iceberg

  An open table format. Besides Delta, it is one of the formats Unity Catalog offers for managed tables, and other engines can work with those managed Iceberg tables over Iceberg's REST catalog interface.

• Approval policy

  A VCF Automation policy under which nominated approvers must sign off catalog requests or day 2 actions before anything is provisioned. Approvers respond from their Inbox, and the policy defines what happens if a request expires.

• Automatic assignment policy

  Works much like a dynamic group: a membership rule based on user attributes decides who gets an access package and removes assignments when people stop matching. It is an ID Governance entitlement management feature, and neither catalog owners nor access package managers are allowed to set one up.

• BROWSE

  Granted on a catalog, this Unity Catalog privilege lets people discover objects, read their metadata and request access, all without USE CATALOG and with no access to the data itself.

• Catalog Explorer

  Opened from Catalog in the sidebar, this is where you browse and administer Unity Catalog objects, their permissions and lineage, and their tags and comments.