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We have our primary data in snowflake and we want to share it with some users over in databricks.

The ask is not to "copy the data into databricks" as it will add to the cost. Rather just access it using SQL queries from databricks.

I know you can use scala or python to create connections and put in something like a dataframe and read it.

But I wanted to see if we can create like an "external table" in databricks and point to data from snowflake.

I can into this link: https://docs.databricks.com/external-data/snowflake.html#language-sql

Under the "Query a Snowflake table in Databricks" link, click on "SQL" tab

and it kind of does that, but does anybody know that databricks create this table as external table OR copies the data over and they make it available?

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    Databricks also recently just announced "Lakehouse Federation" which allows you to connect and read from external data warehouses including Snowflake in a unified way with Unity Catalog. Not to make my own plug, but I made a video on it using SQL Server, the steps are very similar for Snowflake: youtube.com/watch?v=k1JvTEZY8c0&feature=youtu.be And there is documentation for Snowflake specifically here: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databricks/query-federation/… Commented Jul 26, 2023 at 22:10
  • thanks @ZachKing, your input is what I was looking for. Thanks and appreciate that. Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 19:32
  • Thank you @user2221179 I have converted my comment to an answer. Please take a moment to accept the answer if it satisfies your question. Commented Jul 28, 2023 at 1:25

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Databricks recently announced "Lakehouse Federation" which allows you to connect and read from external data warehouses including Snowflake in a unified way with Unity Catalog.

There is documentation for Snowflake specifically here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databricks/query-federation/snowflake

And not to make my own plug, but I made a video on it using SQL Server; the steps are very similar for Snowflake:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1JvTEZY8c0&feature=youtu.be

Note: as of this writing, this feature is limited to read-only access.

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