Reviewed by Aditya Kumar · Last reviewed 2026-03-24
**Unity Catalog**: Central governance for Databricks—metadata, access control, lineage, audit. Metastore → Catalog → Schema → Table. RBAC via grants; row filters and column masks for PII. **Implementation**: Catalog per environment (dev, prod) or per domain. Schemas group...
Unity Catalog: Central governance for Databricks—metadata, access control, lineage, audit. Metastore → Catalog → Schema → Table. RBAC via grants; row filters and column masks for PII. Implementation: Catalog per environment (dev, prod) or per domain. Schemas group tables. Managed tables for durability. Grant SELECT to analysts, MODIFY to engineers. Enable lineage; use row filters for PII tables. Sync groups from IdP. Scalability: Single metastore spans workspaces; federate for multi-cloud. Best practice: Organize by domain; use managed tables; document grants; enable audit logging.
Pro-Move: 'We have catalog per domain (finance, marketing)—each has own RBAC; row filters on PII; lineage feeds our impact analysis.' Red Flag: Flat schema without RBAC or lineage—missing governance value.
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