In Unity Catalog, anything you can grant privileges on: for example the metastore itself, catalogs, schemas, tables, volumes, models and secrets, and also external locations, storage credentials, connections and shares.
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In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Securable object in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Unity Catalog
Azure Databricks' governance solution covering both data and AI in one place, with centralised permissions, auditing, data discovery and lineage.
- Authorisation code
OAuth 2.0 grant used by native and web apps: the user signs in, and the app then acts on their behalf with delegated permissions.
- Metastore
The highest-level Unity Catalog container, holding metadata and permissions for a single cloud region. Each region has only one, which every workspace in that region shares, and it is not meant to be the usual boundary for isolating data.
- External
API Management virtual network mode in which the gateway stays public but can call private back ends inside the VNet.
- General-purpose v1
The older storage account kind (
Storage), which lacks access tiers, Archive and premium file shares and retires on 13 October 2026. Converting to ZRS requires first upgrading to GPv2, a one-way change. - Shares
A relative weighting for dividing a contended resource such as memory, CPU, network bandwidth or disk I/O: double the shares earns double the entitlement. Reservations, by contrast, are guarantees and limits are ceilings.
Related terms
- External location
A securable object in Unity Catalog that combines a storage credential with a particular path in cloud object storage, so that who may read or write under that path is controlled centrally. Volumes, external tables and managed storage locations all depend on it.