If I create a shallow clone of a Delta table, then add data to the clone, where is that data stored?

[User16826992666]

Since a shallow clone only copies the metadata of the original table, I'm wondering where new data would end up. Is it even possible to add data to a shallow clone? Is the data written back to the original source file location?

[sajith_appukutt · Accepted solution]

Shallow Clones are really useful for short-lived use cases such as testing and experimentation . It duplicates the metadata from the source table - and any new data added would go to the location specified while creating the shallow table.

>Is the data written back to the original source file location?

No, you'd have to write code to explicitly MERGE the data back to source if that is desires.