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Credentials

Applies to: check marked yes Databricks SQL check marked yes Databricks Runtime check marked yes Unity Catalog only

Unity Catalog and the built-in Databricks Hive metastore use default locations for managed tables. Unity Catalog introduces several new securable objects to grant privileges to external cloud services and data in cloud object storage.

Credential​

A credential is a securable object representing an AWS IAM role.

After a credential is created, access to it can be granted to principals (users and groups).

Storage credentials are primarily used to create external locations, which scope access to a specific storage path.

Credential names are unqualified and must be unique within the metastore.

Graphical Representation of relationships​

The following diagram describes the relationship between:

  • storage credentials
  • external locations
  • external tables
  • storage paths
  • IAM entities
  • Azure service accounts

External location ER diagram

Examples​

Using CLI create a storage credential my_storage_cred for an AWS IAM role.

Shell
databricks storage-credentials create --json '{"name": "my_storage_cred", "aws_iam_role": {"role_arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789:role/us-west-2-my-account"}}'

The rest of the commands can be run within SQL.

SQL
-- Grant access to the storage credential
> GRANT READ FILES ON STORAGE CREDENTIAL my_aws_storage_cred TO ceo;

-- ceo can directly read from any storage path using my_aws_storage_cred
> SELECT count(1) FROM `delta`.`s3://depts/finance/forecast/somefile` WITH (CREDENTIAL my_aws_storage_cred);
  100
> SELECT count(1) FROM `delta`.`s3://depts/hr/employees` WITH (CREDENTIAL my_aws_storage_cred);
  2017

-- Create an external location on specific path to which `my_aws_storage_cred` has access
> CREATE EXTERNAL LOCATION finance_loc URL 's3://depts/finance'
     WITH (CREDENTIAL my_aws_storage_cred)
     COMMENT 'finance';
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