If you're catching up on Data + AI Summit 2026, here’s a simple Unity Catalog recap for data governance. Three themes stand out: Control, Context, and Choice.
Control:
Keep governance consistent as AI moves from access to action.
AI governance at Data + AI Summit 2026: What’s new with Unity AI Gateway: A recap of the main AI governance announcements from DAIS 2026, including runtime controls, tracing, and budget management for AI systems.
Unity AI Gateway: This product page explains how Unity AI Gateway governs models, agents, tools, and MCP interactions in one place.
ABAC policies (GA):This update covers fine-grained governance features in Unity Catalog for protecting sensitive data at scale.
Context:
Give people and agents a shared understanding of business meaning.
Unity Catalog Semantics: This page shows how Unity Catalog Semantics brings together metrics, glossary concepts, and domains to provide trusted business context.
Metric views: This docs page explains how metric views define business metrics once and let teams query them consistently across SQL, dashboards, Genie Spaces, alerts, and BI tools.
External lineage (GA): This docs page shows how Unity Catalog can extend lineage beyond Databricks to external systems so teams can see end-to-end data flow.
Table insights and popularity: This docs page explains how Catalog Explorer surfaces usage trends, frequent activity, and table or column popularity to help teams understand how data is being used.
Choice:
Stay open across formats, engines, and sharing models as your governance needs grow.
Apache Iceberg updates on Databricks: Iceberg v3 GA, Open Sharing, and Unified Governance. This blog highlights Iceberg-related updates focused on interoperability, open formats, and governance across engines.
Introducing OpenSharing SecureConnect: This post explains how SecureConnect supports secure cross-cloud sharing with less operational overhead.
Deep dive
Explore the Governance and Security sessions from Data + AI Summit 2026 in one place.
Data + AI Summit 2026 Governance and Security track
Get started with Unity Catalog
Explore the docs to set up and govern data and AI across your Databricks environments.
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