topic Re: CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog in Data Governance

CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog

mohamad_atieh — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 19:57:28 GMT

Hi,

I would like to clone the structure (schema only) of delta table without the content using SHALLOW CLONE command, as recommended in databricks documentation, but it doesn't work. I get an error message that this command is not supported in Unity Catalog. However, DEEP CLONE does work well.

Please find below my code and he error message:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE facility_silver SHALLOW CLONE facility_bronze;
 
 
Error in SQL statement: AnalysisException: [UC_COMMAND_NOT_SUPPORTED] CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog.;

Anything wrong with my code?

How to clone delta table schema without its content?

Thanks,

Re: CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog

Ajay-Pandey — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 04:30:24 GMT

Hi @Mohamad Atieh I think UC doesn't not support SHALLOW CLONE yet.

Re: CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog

mohamad_atieh — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 07:54:37 GMT

Thank you for sharing your thinking. I'm for an explanation. Why it's not supported while Deep clone is supported?

Re: CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog

Jfoxyyc — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 05:57:25 GMT

I agree. I'd love to know why/when we can get shallow clone back. I WAS running a dbt slim ci setup where on pull request we'd shallow clone the schema and run state:modified+ against the clone, reporting back success/fail to the PR. Can't really do this with UC.

Re: CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog

RicaWage_64393 — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 10:42:19 GMT

I'm having the same. We use shallow clones in our development cycle, but with UC that's not possible which is a blocker

Re: CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog

33799 — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 14:58:04 GMT

Can you please let us know if SHALLOW CLONE is on the roadmap for UC?

We use shallow clones to update tables and not affect running workflows...

Re: CREATE TABLE SHALLOW CLONE is not supported in Unity Catalog

WAHID — Fri, 05 May 2023 21:39:34 GMT

You can shallow clone the table to an external location after sync the result of the shallow clone to unity catalog.

Here is an example https://medium.com/@wahidatoui/sync-delta-tables-stored-in-dbfs-managed-or-external-to-unity-catalog-1fe29a3ae61b