Build fluency with Unity Catalog — metastore hierarchy, Delta Sharing, automated lineage, and unified permissions.
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1 / 5
At standup, a data engineer asks what a Unity Catalog metastore is. Which answer is correct?
A Unity Catalog metastore is the top-level organisational container, created once per region. It holds catalogs, which contain schemas, which contain tables, views, and functions. One metastore can be attached to multiple Databricks workspaces, centralising governance, access control, and lineage across all of them.
2 / 5
In a PR review, a teammate asks about Unity Catalog's three-level namespace. What is correct?
Unity Catalog enforces a strict three-level namespace: catalog.schema.table. The catalog (e.g. prod, dev) sits below the metastore; the schema (formerly called database) groups related objects; and table (or view, function) is the leaf object. Fully qualified names are required in SQL to avoid ambiguity.
3 / 5
An incident involves sharing data externally using Delta Sharing. What does Delta Sharing do?
Delta Sharing is an open, vendor-neutral protocol (implemented by Databricks and others). The data provider grants access to specific tables via a share; recipients receive a credential token and query data directly from the provider's storage via a REST API — no data is copied. Recipients can use Databricks, Pandas, Spark, or any Delta Sharing client; they do not need Databricks.
4 / 5
During a design review, the team asks about lineage tracking in Unity Catalog. What is correct?
Unity Catalog lineage is automatic and requires no additional configuration. For SQL queries executed in Databricks, it captures both table-level and column-level lineage — which source columns feed into which target columns. Lineage is queryable via the Unity Catalog UI (Data Explorer) and the REST API, and applies to SQL notebooks, jobs, and Delta Live Tables.
5 / 5
In a code review, a teammate writes a GRANT statement for Unity Catalog. Which statement about GRANT privileges is correct?
Unity Catalog uses standard SQL GRANT / REVOKE statements on securables at every level of the hierarchy: metastore, catalog, schema, table, view, and function. Permissions inherit downward: granting USE CATALOG and SELECT on a catalog gives the principal access to all schemas and tables within, unless overridden by a more specific deny.