Shallow copy in databricks

[_deepak_]

Hi, I am new to Databricks. I need to setup a non-prod environment for which I need data of prod to be cloned in non-prod. Explored some and got to know about shallow copy. Is it possible to do shallow copy across environments? or Is it possible to do shallow clonning across different databricks instances?

[daniel_sahal · Accepted solution]

@deepak prasad​ 

I'm not sure it's possible to do that. Even with Unity Catalog enabled, you cannot use shallow clone.

You can do two things here:

Without UC - just simply recreate an empty table in your non-prod environment and do SELECT * from prod storage,

With UC - make sure that two workspaces are in the same metastore and you can either create views based on prod data or do a deep clone from prod to non-prod