Databricks Runtime, Pyspark and Spark Versions

loujiang · ‎05-22-2026

Hello, Dear community,

I was go through the documentation of function from_xml here pyspark.sql.functions.from_xml — PySpark 4.1.2 documentation, it denotes that it is available in pyspark version higher than 4.0.0.

Meanwhile, we have documentation for from_xml at Azure/ AWS,from_xml function - Azure Databricks - Databricks SQL | Microsoft Learn the support of it is above Databricks Runtime 14.1.

But the Databricks Runtime 14.1 are using Apache Spark version 3.5.0, which should has no from_xml implementation. How should we understand this difference?

Thanks

best wishes

loujiang

szymon_dybczak · ‎05-22-2026

Hi @loujiang ,

Databricks Runtime is not a vanilla Apache Spark distribution. DBR is built on top of a highly optimized version of Apache Spark, but also adds enhancements and additional components that substantially improve usability, performance, and security beyond what's in the open-source release. This means Databricks can - and regularly does - ship Spark features ahead of their upstream release.

Looking directly at the DBR 14.1 release notes, the Spark changelog section lists: Databricks Runtime 14.1 (EoS) | Databricks on Google Cloud

[SPARK-44788] [SC-142980][CONNECT][PYTHON][SQL] Add from_xml and schema_of_xml to pyspark, spark connect and sql function

This JIRA ticket was cherry-picked into DBR 14.1, even though DBR 14.1 runs on Spark 3.5.0. Databricks applied this patch internally before it landed in an official Apache Spark release.

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