databricks Platform · Updated Aug 8, 2025

Create external Delta tables from third-party clients (Public Preview)

You can now create Unity Catalog external tables backed by Delta Lake from external clients and systems, such as Apache Spark.

Public Preview Open docs ↗release note ↗

What it does

You can now create Unity Catalog external tables backed by Delta Lake from external clients and systems, such as Apache Spark. This page describes how to use the Unity REST API to create, read, and write to Unity Catalog managed and external tables from external Delta clients. For a full list of supported integrations, see Unity Catalog integrations.

Why it matters

Reduces operational overhead and unlocks new capabilities for data teams on Databricks.

Key capabilities

SELECT on the table for

SELECT on the table for reads

MODIFY on the table for

MODIFY on the table for writes

CREATE on the schema for

CREATE on the schema for table creation

For external writes to managed

For external writes to managed Delta tables, verify that the table being written to has catalog commits enabled.

Architecture

Databricks Platform → Platform

In short

Read the full documentation ↗

Key takeaway

You can now create Unity Catalog external tables backed by Delta Lake from external clients and systems, such as Apache Spark.

2025-08-08-create-external-delta-tables-from-third-party-clients-public-preview Generated by the Databricks Updates Agent · browse all updates