What is... Unity Catalog?

Unity Catalog is a unified governance tool that serves as the resource perimeter for all data on Databricks. It provides centralized access control, auditing, lineage, and data discovery capabilities across workspaces. Unity Catalog is designed to help organizations manage their data more effectively and securely by offering a single place for admins to handle access policies to each logically separated 'catalog'.

Key Features

Centralized Access Control: Unity Catalog allows administrators to define data access policies in one place, ensuring consistent security across all Databricks workspaces. This simplifies the management of permissions and enhances security compliance.
Standards-Compliant Security Model: The security model of Unity Catalog is based on standard ANSI SQL, enabling administrators to grant permissions using familiar syntax. Permissions can be set at various levels, including catalogs, schemas (databases), tables, and views.
Built-in Auditing and Lineage: Unity Catalog automatically captures user-level audit logs, recording access to data. It also tracks lineage data, showing how data assets are created and used across different languages and tools. This feature is crucial for compliance and understanding data flow within the organization.
Data Discovery: Unity Catalog provides tagging and documentation capabilities for data assets, along with a search interface to help data consumers find the data they need. This enhances data discoverability and usability.
System Tables (Public Preview): Unity Catalog includes system tables that allow users to easily access and query operational data, such as audit logs, billable usage, and lineage information.

Benefits

Simplified Data Governance: By centralizing data governance, Unity Catalog reduces the complexity of managing data access and compliance across multiple workspaces.
Enhanced Security: With a unified security model and comprehensive auditing capabilities, Unity Catalog helps organizations maintain robust data security and meet regulatory requirements.
Improved Data Management: The ability to tag, document, and search for data assets makes it easier for data teams to manage and utilize data effectively.