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Unity Catalog is the unified governance layer for data and AI in Azure Databricks. It provides a single place to control access, discover assets, track lineage, classify sensitive data, and monitor quality across your organization, no matter where your data lives. Unity Catalog governs models, functions, and other AI assets as securable objects, the same way it governs your tables and volumes.
This chapter covers the Unity Catalog capabilities that govern your data and AI assets. The runtime controls for AI, such as routing model traffic, setting guardrails, and monitoring AI usage and cost, are covered in AI governance with Unity AI Gateway. Related security topics, such as authentication, networking, encryption, and privacy compliance, are covered in Security and compliance.
Start here
The following resources help you understand Unity Catalog, set it up, and follow recommended practices.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| What is Unity Catalog? | Understand the Unity Catalog object model and how it governs data and AI assets. |
| Get started with Unity Catalog | Set up Unity Catalog and create your first governed assets. |
| Unity Catalog best practices | Follow recommended practices for setting up and managing governance with Unity Catalog. |
Governance capabilities
The following capabilities cover the major areas of governing data and AI assets with Unity Catalog.
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Access control | Grant and manage fine-grained access to data and AI assets with privileges, attribute-based access control, and row filters and column masks. |
| Governed tags | Define and control the tags used to classify and organize securable objects. |
| Data discovery | Help users find the data and AI assets they need with Catalog Explorer, AI-generated comments, and certified and deprecated tags. |
| Data and AI lineage | Capture and visualize how data flows through your organization, down to the column level, including the models that consume it. |
| Data classification | Automatically scan and tag sensitive data, such as PII, across tables in Unity Catalog. |
| Data quality monitoring | Detect anomalies across a catalog or schema and profile the statistical properties of individual tables. |
| Auditing | Track who accessed your data and what actions they took using audit logs. |
| Data sharing | Share data and AI assets securely across organizations and platforms with OpenSharing, Clean Rooms, and Databricks Marketplace. |
| AI governance with Unity AI Gateway | Govern AI runtime interactions with Unity AI Gateway, including model APIs, coding agents, agents, AI traffic, and guardrails. |
Account and metastore admins can see a consolidated summary of the data estate, including asset usage, classification coverage, and data quality, on the Data page in Governance Hub.