Connecting to Databricks Unity Catalog

How to connect

Pre-requisites:

To scan Azure Databricks Unity Catalog, Dataedo connects to a Databricks workspace API and uses the Personal Access Token for authentication.

You need to have a Databricks workspace that is Unity Catalog enabled and attached to the metastore you want to scan.

Dataedo will need the following information to connect to the Databricks instance:

NOTE: You can find them in your Databricks workspace

1. Workspace URL - once you've opened your Databricks workspace, copy the URL from the address bar in your web browser and paste it into Dataedo

2. Token - a personal token that has to be generated in profile settings in your Databricks workspace. Check how to generate PAT

3. Catalog - you can either type in the Catalog name manually or later choose it from the list

Create Connection

1. From the list of connections, select "Databricks"

2. Enter connection details

3. If you don't remember the Catalog name, you can select it from the list of available catalogs using the [...] button in Dataedo

Importing metadata

4. When the connection is successful, Dataedo will read objects and then show a list of objects found. You can choose which objects to import.

5. You can also use advanced filter to narrow down the list of objects.

Outcome

1. Metadata for your Unity Catalog has been imported to new documentation in the repository.

2. Lineage for your objects within imported Unity Catalog objects was documented more details check here

Watchouts

caution

• For all the objects that you want to bring into Dataedo, the user needs to have at least SELECT privilege on tables/views, USE CATALOG on the object’s catalog, and USE SCHEMA on the object’s schema.

• In order to scan all the objects in a Unity Catalog metastore, use a user with metastore admin role. Learn more from Manage privileges in Unity Catalog and Unity Catalog privileges and securable objects.

• For classification, the user also needs to have SELECT privilege on the tables/views to retrieve sample data.

• If your Azure Databricks workspace doesn’t allow access from the public network, or if your Microsoft Purview account doesn’t enable access from all networks, you can use the Managed Virtual Network Integration Runtime for the scan. You can set up a managed private endpoint for Azure Databricks as needed to establish private connectivity.

How to generate the Personal Access Token?

• Use the latest manual from Databricks Databricks personal access token authentication

Depending on your implementation scenario, you would need to use:

• We recommend using Service Principal to avoid losing connection if a personal account is removed or the token expires. To do it, follow this guide Databricks personal access tokens for service principals

• For smaller non-production implementations like POC, you can use the Personal account. To set up, use the following steps Databricks personal access tokens for workspace users