topic Re: unity catalog in Databricks Free Edition Help

unity catalog

Thomas_Aimiuwu — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:16:32 GMT

please how do you create a unity catalog in a free edition?

Re: unity catalog

szymon_dybczak — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:35:02 GMT

Hi @Thomas_Aimiuwu ,

Unity Catalog is preconfigured for you in Free Edition. You should have access to default catalog called workspace:

Of course if you need to create your own catalog you can do it using UI or SQL:

CREATE CATALOG demo

Re: unity catalog

Thomas_Aimiuwu — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:42:23 GMT

thanks @szymon_dybczak

Re: unity catalog

Thomas_Aimiuwu — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:47:58 GMT

%sql

This in pay-as-you-go

create table if not exists demo.test

(country string,

indicator string,

date string,

year_week string,

value string,

source string,

url string)

using csv

options(path "/mnt/formal1/hospital_admissions.csv")

the above worked in a pay-as-you-go workspace with storage already mounted.

Below is Databricks free edition which does work but came back with an error, please is there a workaroud?

%sql

create table if not exists demo.test

(country string,

indicator string,

date string,

year_week string,

value string,

source string,

url string)

using csv

options(path "/Volumes/workspace/demo/raw/hospital_admissions.csv")

Re: unity catalog

Thomas_Aimiuwu — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:55:41 GMT

create table demo.cases_test as

select * from csv.`/Volumes/workspace/demo/raw/cases_test.csv`

WITH (

header = "true",

inferSchema "true"

);

The above query also works for csv file and below works for json,parquet files respectively

%sql

drop table if exists demo.constructors;

create table demo.constructors as

select * from json.`/Volumes/workspace/demo/raw/constructors.json`

%sql

drop table if exists demo.constructors;

create table demo.constructors as

select * from parquet.`/Volumes/workspace/demo/raw/constructors.parquet`

Once @szymon_dybczak thanks again, really appreciate