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Wherobots Data Federation enables users to query external data sources in place, eliminating the need for data migration. Depending on the source, access is configured either through a Wherobots-managed connection object or by entering the source system’s authentication details directly in the foreign catalog setup flow. Once configured, Wherobots presents the external data as a foreign catalog in the Data Hub. You can then query this external catalog’s data in a Wherobots Notebook and write your results.
Databricks foreign catalogs do not use a Wherobots Cloud connection
Databricks Unity Catalog foreign catalogs authenticate directly against your Databricks workspace URL. Use a Personal Access Token (PAT) for Unity Catalog Delta tables, or OAuth client credentials (client_id and client_secret) for Unity Catalog Iceberg tables.
When you connect to a foreign catalog, Wherobots acts as a client and data governance takes place at the data’s source. With a foreign catalog you can mirror and manage data from external data systems within Wherobots.
  • External Source of Truth: The external system (such as Unity Catalog) is the authoritative source for metadata. Wherobots does not own or control that metadata.
  • Read-Only Connection: Wherobots reads metadata from the foreign catalog to understand available tables and schemas but does not write to that specific table or manage its lifecycle.
  • No Data Discovery: The external system (e.g., Databricks Unity Catalog) is responsible for discovering data and keeping its own catalog up to date. Wherobots simply reflects the current state of that external catalog.

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Benefits of Wherobots Data Federation

  • Zero-Copy architecture: Read tables managed by external cloud providers, like Databricks, without moving or duplicating data.
  • Secure federation: Set up access to external data sources using the authentication model required by each source.
  • Get a unified view of all your Organization’s data: All connected tables appear side-by-side in the Wherobots Data Hub. This allows your team to browse, query, and even join data from different sources as if it were all local, dramatically simplifying data discovery and analysis.
  • Accelerated innovation on the lakehouse: Take spatial ideas to market faster using Wherobots’ 300+ spatial functions, raster inference, and compute for physical world data on your Unity Catalog data.

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Add a foreign catalog

To add a foreign catalog in the Wherobots Data Hub, select your data source from the list below and follow the step-by-step guide: