Hi!

A potential solution to your issue could be configuring read-only access to the schema in your production catalog. This approach allows you to securely share the production catalog with your staging workspace while ensuring that users in the staging workspace can only read data and cannot manipulate it. You will have to assign the production catalog to your staging workspace.

To implement this:

1. Assign appropriate permissions (e.g. SELECT only) to the users or groups in the staging workspace for the specific schemas or tables you wish to share.
2. Ensure no write privileges are granted to the staging workspace for the production catalog to maintain data integrity.

If you are considering Delta Sharing, it’s a robust alternative, especially for use cases that involve sharing data with external systems or strict decoupling of environments. However, for internal use between your production and staging workspaces, managing permissions within Unity Catalog might suffice.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions.