Work with unstructured data

Store, govern, and process unstructured files, such as documents, images, audio, and video, alongside structured data in Unity Catalog.

Get started

Try an end-to-end example to see how the pieces fit together.

Guide	Description
FILE functions quickstart	Create a table with a `FILE` column and work with files using `FILE` functions.
Unstructured data tutorial	Store, query, process, and share unstructured files using Unity Catalog volumes.

Choose how to store and reference files based on whether you access them by path or as values in a table.

Approach	Description
Unity Catalog volumes	Govern storage for non-tabular files. Upload, organize, and access files in a volume by path.
FILE type	Reference files and their metadata as first-class values in a table, governed by access to the rows that reference them. For the type definition, see the FILE type reference.
Binary data source	Store the raw bytes of a file in a `BINARY` column.
Image data source	Read image files into a DataFrame.

After you store your files in Unity Catalog, extract content, run custom code, and build pipelines.

Task	Description
Parse documents	Extract structured content from documents with `ai_parse_document` and other AI functions.
Process files with UDFs	Read file metadata and bytes, and generate new files, using your own code in UDFs.
Ingest files as FILE references	Load files into tables as `FILE` references.
Build a file pipeline	Process files end to end in a pipeline.
Search files in a volume	Index the files in a volume so that users and agents can search them.

Control who can access files and manage their lifecycle with Unity Catalog.

Capability	Description
Volume access control	Grant privileges on volumes to control who can read and write files by path.
FILE MANAGED lifecycle	Let Azure Databricks manage the storage and lifecycle of the files that a table references.
Row filters on FILE columns	Restrict access to files by applying row filters to the rows that reference them.

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