Delta Sharing is seeing unimaginable momentum, with a 300% year-over-year development in energetic shares. This is not simply one-time file transfers; it represents sustained, ongoing collaboration that proves actual worth is being exchanged.
A key issue on this development is the platform’s open philosophy. Delta Sharing permits prospects to share any Information and AI asset, with anybody, with none friction. 40% of Delta Sharing energetic shares are with recipients outdoors the Databricks ecosystem. This demonstrates that Delta Sharing is powering an open collaboration ecosystem that reaches throughout platforms and clouds.
On this publish, we’ve gathered the highest 10 questions individuals ask about Delta Sharing. Maintain studying to get the overview, why it’s totally different, what the commonest use instances are, and what you must get began.
1. What’s Delta Sharing?
Delta Sharing is probably the most broadly adopted open protocol for safe information sharing. It lets organizations alternate dwell information and AI belongings throughout platforms and clouds.
2. What makes Delta Sharing totally different?
Most sharing instruments drive you to repeat information to a brand new vacation spot, creating stale silos and increasing your assault floor. Delta Sharing enables you to learn dwell information on the supply, so there’s nothing to maneuver or duplicate.
Second, as a result of Delta Sharing is open supply, it isn’t tied to a single ecosystem. You’ll be able to share out of your Databricks lakehouse or elsewhere, and recipients can eat the information whether or not they use Databricks or not.
Lastly, recipients join by means of commonplace, open connectors: Python, Apache Spark, Java, Energy BI, and extra, to learn the shared tables you authorize.
Taken collectively, Delta Sharing gives platform-independent collaboration for information and AI throughout groups, instruments, and clouds. You’re capable of work with out lock-in, with out copies, and with out governance gaps.
3. Does Delta Sharing work with Iceberg? If I exploit Apache Iceberg, how can I leverage Delta Sharing?
Sure, Delta Sharing is totally suitable with Apache Iceberg. By selecting Delta Sharing, you get one of the best of each worlds: entry to the widest collaboration ecosystem with Apache Iceberg seamlessly working as your information supply and vacation spot, whereas leveraging the complete energy of Delta Sharing.
Delta Sharing makes sharing a first-class primitive in Iceberg. With distinctive options equivalent to OIDC token federation, which permits open recipients to authenticate with customized IdPs, and Community Gateway, which simplifies and scales community configuration, prospects unlock full interoperability throughout desk codecs.
Tables managed in Unity Catalog can now be shared with Iceberg purchasers equivalent to Snowflake, Trino, and Spark. Moreover, international Iceberg tables managed by catalogs like Hive Metastore or AWS Glue could be federated into Unity Catalog after which shared by means of the identical protocol. In each instances, you register the tables in Unity Catalog, create a share, and add related recipients both on or off Databricks. This ensures Iceberg customers can collaborate with Databricks prospects utilizing dwell, ruled information—with out transferring or duplicating it.
4. Can I exploit Delta Sharing to share information with customers who are usually not Datatabricks’ prospects?
Sure, you may share information outdoors of Databricks. With Lakehouse Federation Sharing, you hook up the opposite catalog (Glue, Hive Metastore, BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, you title it) and expose its tables by means of the open‑supply Delta Sharing protocol. The info stays the place it already is, however anybody you grant entry to sees the dwell, up‑to‑date model, and each learn is logged in Unity Catalog for audit and safety.
As a result of the protocol is open, you may as well spin up a Delta Sharing server and pull information straight from legacy programs like SAP, Oracle, Atlassian and different on‑prem or cloud sources, then question it inside Databricks notebooks with out transferring or duplicating something.
5. Why use Delta Sharing? What issues does it resolve?
We have checked out how hundreds of shoppers are utilizing Delta Sharing and located 4 foremost methods it actually makes a distinction for his or her companies.
| Use Case | Description | Buyer/Associate Instance |
|---|---|---|
| Inside Sharing | Breaking down information silos inside an organization, throughout enterprise models and clouds. | Mercedes-Benz makes use of it to create a unified information mesh for its world groups. |
| Peer-to-Peer Sharing | Securely collaborating with companions, suppliers, and prospects. | Procore gives prospects with direct entry to vital mission information for analytics. |
| Third-Get together Information Licensing | Licensing and integrating exterior information and AI fashions. | S&P World makes its market intelligence datasets accessible on the Databricks Market |
| SaaS Software Sharing | Connecting to information locked in numerous SaaS functions. | Oracle Autonomous Database—together with Oracle Fusion Information Intelligence—can now securely and seamlessly share information with Databricks and different platforms |
6. If I already share information utilizing SFTP, S3, Dropbox, or e-mail, why would I would like Delta Sharing?
In case you’re nonetheless sharing information by means of SFTP, S3, Dropbox, or e-mail, you’re exposing your group to pointless threat and inefficiency. See what occurred to Finastra the place attackers exploited SFTP weak point stealing roughly 400GB of delicate
These previous‑college methods may match, however they’re dated and fragile. You find yourself copying full recordsdata, juggling static passwords or keys that by no means expire, and creating numerous out‑of‑sync copies that open up main safety and compliance gaps. Delta Sharing replaces all of that with a contemporary, safe, and auditable strategy. You’ll be able to share simply the particular tables, rows, or columns somebody wants (and AI Fashions as effectively), and the individual pulling the information all the time sees the newest model as a result of there’s no additional copy hanging round.
Safety is tighter, too. As an alternative of handing out static passwords or entry keys, Delta Sharing palms out brief‑lived tokens, and it could actually hook into the identification system you already use, so that you by no means must handle a separate set of credentials. Each time somebody seems on the information, it’s logged in Unity Catalog, which makes auditing and compliance loads simpler.
In case you’re severe about defending delicate information and simplifying collaboration, Delta Sharing isn’t a “good to have”; it’s the baseline for safe information alternate in the present day.
Take a look at How Kythera Labs, a Databricks Constructed-On Associate, saves $2M+/12 months utilizing Delta Sharing
7. What sorts of belongings can I share utilizing Delta Sharing?
You’ll be able to share virtually any form of information or AI asset with Delta Sharing, and that breadth is fairly distinctive. These embrace tables (and desk partitions), streaming tables, managed Iceberg tables, international schemas & tables, views (together with dynamic views for row/column filtering), materialized views, volumes, notebooks, and AI fashions. In case you share a whole schema (database), the whole lot in it (tables, views, volumes, fashions) is shared instantly, and any new belongings added later may even turn into accessible to recipients. All of those belongings are tied to a single Unity Catalog metastore, holding the sharing clear and arranged.
8. How does Delta Sharing hold the information secure when a supplier shares it with a recipient?
Delta Sharing makes use of a zero‑belief, token‑based mostly strategy. When somebody asks for information, the sharing server checks Unity Catalog, then palms out a brief‑lived, learn‑solely token or a pre‑signed URL that factors on to the storage—so no everlasting passwords ever go away the supplier. All visitors is wrapped in TLS encryption, and each request is logged for audit. Inside Databricks‑to‑Databricks, the handshake is dealt with mechanically; exterior customers can authenticate with easy credential recordsdata or OIDC federation, however the identical non permanent token, encrypted, and totally audited mannequin applies. This ensures solely the precise individuals can see the precise information, and just for a restricted time. Learn How Delta Sharing Allows Safe Finish-to-Finish Collaboration for a deep dive
9. That sounds good. What are the associated fee implications of utilizing Delta Sharing?
Getting began with Delta Sharing doesn’t price a dime — there’s no cost to arrange, configure, or share an information set or AI Mannequin. You solely see a invoice when somebody truly queries the information, and even then, the charges break down into three clear items.
First, the compute price (the processing energy wanted to run the question) is normally paid by the individual doing the question, although the information‑proprietor can select to cowl it if that makes extra sense.
Second, there’s the egress price for transferring information out of the supplier’s cloud; the newer R2 mode (now GA) even gives a “zero egress” choice, so you may keep away from that cost altogether.
Third, storage price solely issues when you resolve to maintain a replicated copy—dwell, on‑the‑fly entry doesn’t require additional house.
Right here’s a Databricks to Databricks share instance: think about a provider on AWS shares a materialized view to a retailer on Azure. When the information is shared, the provider pays egress for information leaving AWS, and when the retailer runs a question on the shared information, the retailer pays compute for the question.
10. What do I would like to start out utilizing Delta Sharing?
The necessities depend upon whether or not you’re sharing with a Databricks recipient or a non-Databricks recipient.
Exterior sharing have to be enabled, and organizations ought to observe governance and potential cross-cloud egress prices
Able to get began?
Keep tuned for the subsequent sequence of questions, the place we’ll discover subjects together with safety, how Delta Sharing powers merchandise like Clear Rooms and Databricks Market, and different superior options.