From December 2, 2026, CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW will update a view in place instead of dropping and recreating it, so grants, tags and comments are preserved. Governed tags on a view column must be removed before the column is dropped this way, otherwise the statement fails with CANNOT_DROP_TAGGED_COLUMN. Adding NOCOPY drops grants, tags and comments explicitly, though governed tags are still retained.
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4 changes this week 3 shipped 1 in preview 1 asks for action
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Catalog
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CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW will keep grants, tags and comments from 2 December 2026
Privileges: GRANT, REVOKE, and DENY +1Read
Catalog
Release
The Discover page and domains in Unity Catalog reach general availability
Discover, a curated way to browse assets without knowing the catalog hierarchy, and domains with subdomains are now generally available. Domains group tables, dashboards, notebooks and Genie Agents by business area, allow curated highlights, and surface AI-recommended assets.
Domains and PagesRead
Catalog
Release
Window measures in metric views reach general availability
Metric views can now define window measures, which cover rolling windows, cumulative totals and semiadditive aggregations such as moving averages, period-over-period change and running totals. The feature is generally available as of this note. Anyone modelling time-based KPIs in metric views no longer has to treat it as a preview.
Metric viewsRead
Everything, day by day
Thursday 8 October
- The Discover page and domains in Unity Catalog reach general availabilityDiscover, a curated way to browse assets without knowing the catalog hierarchy, and domains with subdomains are now generally available. Domains group tables, dashboards, notebooks and Genie Agents by business area, allow curated highlights, and surface AI-recommended assets.
- Workday Data Connect federation connector for Unity Catalog opens in BetaA Lakehouse Federation connector lets Unity Catalog read Workday's shared Iceberg tables in place, with no ingestion pipeline and read-only access. It needs Databricks Runtime 19 or above, and a workspace admin must enable it from the Previews page. Lakeflow Connect for Workday remains the route when a durable copy is needed.
Tuesday 6 October
- CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW will keep grants, tags and comments from 2 December 2026From December 2, 2026, CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW will update a view in place instead of dropping and recreating it, so grants, tags and comments are preserved. Governed tags on a view column must be removed before the column is dropped this way, otherwise the statement fails with CANNOT_DROP_TAGGED_COLUMN. Adding NOCOPY drops grants, tags and comments explicitly, though governed tags are still retained.
- Window measures in metric views reach general availabilityMetric views can now define window measures, which cover rolling windows, cumulative totals and semiadditive aggregations such as moving averages, period-over-period change and running totals. The feature is generally available as of this note. Anyone modelling time-based KPIs in metric views no longer has to treat it as a preview.
Wednesday 23 September
- Time travel can enforce ABAC policies on qualifying managed tablesIn Databricks Runtime 19, time travel can be used on qualifying Unity Catalog managed tables while ABAC row filter and column mask policies are enforced. The feature is in Beta, so learners should treat it as preview behaviour rather than generally available behaviour.
- Scala UDFs can now read Unity Catalog secretsSession-scoped and Unity Catalog Scala UDFs can now access secrets managed in Unity Catalog. Session-scoped UDFs use the caller's permissions, while Unity Catalog Scala UDFs declare secrets in a SECRETS clause and use the function owner's permissions. Users must check the stated environment, Databricks Runtime, access mode, and SQL warehouse requirements before using this in a UDF.
- Unity Catalog Python UDFs are GA for scalar and batch useScalar and batch Unity Catalog Python UDFs are now generally available on all supported compute types. The release adds named handlers for row-at-a-time scalar UDFs, removes the five-UDF-call-per-query limit, and aligns scalar TIMESTAMP inputs with PySpark behavior. Some capabilities require environment_version 6 or above, and requirements vary by feature and compute type.
Tuesday 15 September
- READ METADATA will be default for compliance profile workspacesREAD METADATA will be available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled in mid-October 2026. The privilege gives read-only access to object metadata that BROWSE does not show, including privilege grants, row filters and column masks, and ABAC policies, so users who inspect or debug access controls should understand the difference.
- ABAC row filters and column masks can apply to views in betaABAC row filters and column masks now extend to views, in addition to tables. Account admins can enable the ABAC on Views preview from the account console, and the feature requires Databricks Runtime 19 or above.
Friday 11 September
- OpenSharing sharing for foreign Iceberg tables is generally availableSharing and reading foreign Iceberg tables with OpenSharing is now generally available. Providers can add Iceberg tables federated from foreign Iceberg catalogs through Lakehouse Federation to a share, including for recipients that use external Iceberg clients.
- Open sharing reaches foreign catalogs, Iceberg includedA provider can share Iceberg tables, schemas and tables that live in a federated catalog without copying anything into Databricks. The compute and storage cost of materialising them stays with the provider. Generally available.
Wednesday 9 September
- System table retention can be set account-wide in BetaAccount admins can now set an account-wide retention period for supported system tables. The release note says the configurable range is 30 to 3,650 days.
- External secrets in Unity Catalog are in betaExternal secrets connect a Unity Catalog schema to AWS Secrets Manager. They appear in Unity Catalog as read-only securable objects, with values read from AWS Secrets Manager on demand and access governed by Unity Catalog privileges.
- A Unity Catalog schema can read straight from AWS Secrets ManagerA schema can be connected to AWS Secrets Manager, and the secrets appear as read-only securables governed by Unity Catalog privileges. Beta, so the shape may still move.
Tuesday 8 September
- ABAC DENY policies in Unity Catalog are in BetaABAC DENY policies are in Beta in Unity Catalog. They can explicitly deny the MANAGE ACCESS CONTROL privilege for specified principals, including object owners, and the denial takes precedence over grants.
- ABAC gains DENY policies, and they beat every grantA DENY policy blocks MANAGE ACCESS CONTROL for the principals it names, and it always wins over a grant that would allow it. Beta. It is the first ABAC construct that can take something away rather than hand it out.
Thursday 3 September
- Data Classification will scan Unity Catalog views in BetaData Classification will scan Unity Catalog views in addition to tables. View columns will be classified for sensitive data with the same detection engine used for tables, and the release note says this is a Beta feature.
- Metric views can be shared with OpenSharing in betaDatabricks users can now share metric views with users in other metastores or accounts by using OpenSharing. Anyone who teaches or studies metric views or OpenSharing should treat this as beta, not generally available.
Saturday 1 August
- Identity attributes entered beta for Unity Catalog ABAC policiesIdentity attributes entered beta in Databricks. The entry describes a fixed set of nine user attributes that Databricks stores on account users and syncs from the identity provider: title, userType, locality, region, country, costCenter, organization, division, department. Readers working with Unity Catalog ABAC policies should know these account-level attributes exist, but the item describes them as beta.
- Pages entered beta for business definitions in Unity CatalogPages entered beta in Databricks. They define business concepts such as terms, acronyms, and KPIs in Unity Catalog semantics, organize them by domain, and let Genie One read them as trusted context.
- Role-based access control is generally availableRole-based access control reached general availability in Databricks. A user can assume a role, implemented as a group, and act with only that role's permissions for the session instead of all permissions they otherwise have.
- Secrets in Unity Catalog reached general availabilitySecrets in Unity Catalog reached general availability in Databricks in August 2026. The entry says secrets are stored and governed as Unity Catalog securable objects, addressed with three-level names such as catalog.schema.secret, and covered by the same privileges and auditing model as other data assets.
- Tag automations entered beta for governed tagsTag automations entered beta in Databricks. They define rules that assign or remove governed tags on matching Unity Catalog tables or volumes as data and metadata change. Anyone studying governed tags should treat this as a beta feature, not a generally available replacement for manual tagging.
Wednesday 1 July
- Governance Hub entered beta as an account-level governance UIGovernance Hub entered beta in Databricks. It is an account-level UI in the account console for monitoring governance across a Databricks account, with Data, AI, Cost, and Tags pages.
- Transactions are GA for Unity Catalog managed tablesMulti-statement, multi-table ACID transactions reached general availability in Databricks. On Unity Catalog managed tables, SQL changes can be grouped with BEGIN ATOMIC ... END or BEGIN TRANSACTION ... COMMIT so the changes commit together or roll back together.
Nothing of that kind yet.