Hiding the Immuta Database in Databricks

Audience: System Administrators

Content Summary: This page describes how to hide the immuta database in Databricks.

Hiding the database does not disable access to it

Queries can still be performed against tables in the immuta database using the Immuta-qualified table name (e.g., immuta.my_schema_my_table) regardless of whether or not this feature is enabled.

Overview

The immuta database on Immuta-enabled clusters allows Immuta to track Immuta-managed data sources separately from remote Databricks tables so that policies and other security features can be applied. However, Immuta supports raw tables in Databricks, so table-backed queries do not need to reference this database. When configuring a Databricks cluster, you can hide immuta from any calls to SHOW DATABASES so that users are not confused or misled by that database.

Hide the immuta Database

When configuring a Databricks cluster, hide immuta by using the following environment variable in the Spark cluster configuration:

IMMUTA_SPARK_SHOW_IMMUTA_DATABASE=false

Then, Immuta will not show this database when a SHOW DATABASES query is performed.