Databricks Excel ODBC driver bug

Question

Hello! I might have experienced a bug with the ODBC driver. 

We have an issue where given certain priviledges in databricks, the ODBC driver is unable to show any schemas/tables. When we click the 'expand' button on any catalog in the list (of which we have 6) no schemas are visible. It simply loads and finishes 'succesfully', similar to when it 'works'. My assumption is that the result from what ever API seems to be empty.. or something. the driver might be crashing or something, without Excel registering.  The priviledge in question seems to be if the user has access to any federated catalog with USE CATALOG, without access to any of the underlying schemas. (I.e no USE SCHEMA and no SELECT).  Anyway, we can add the priviledge in question; it breaks. remove it. it works again. We are not sure how to proceed, but have removed access to this catalog for the time being, however it changes the structure of our security setup somewhat. If this is a known bug and a fix is on it's way, i'd love to hear it. if we are doing something wrong, likewise.

Answer 1

@ADM Nick Sørensen - Thanks for the question and using MS Q&A platform.

Here is the update from internal team:

The priviledge in question seems to be if the user has access to any federated catalog with USE CATALOG, without access to any of the underlying schemas. (I.e no USE SCHEMA and no SELECT)

All users are granted the "BROWSE" privilege by default on new catalogs that are created using the Catalog Explorer. So try removing the BROWSE privilege and then work with the "USE Catalog" privilege to see if it makes a difference.

Note: The USE CATALOG privilege on the parent catalog is not required to read an object’s metadata if the user has the BROWSE privilege on that catalog.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

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