Unity Catalog - razmipatel/Random GitHub Wiki

Unity Catalog is a Databricks account-level governance solution.
The metastore is the central data governance container in Unity Catalog. It holds catalogs, schemas, and tables, plus permissions.
The metastore is created once per region per Databricks account — not per workspace.

Workspaces (Dev, Test, WebAuth, Prod, etc.) attach to a Unity Catalog metastore, but do not host it.
Once attached, users in that workspace can see the governed data (if permitted).
Best practice:
- One primary metastore per region that all relevant workspaces attach to.
- Avoid creating separate metastores for each environment unless you want total isolation (different policies, different lineage, different governance).

Prod, Test, Dev workspaces: attach them all to the same Unity Catalog metastore. This ensures consistent governance, lineage, data sharing, and central policy management.
WebAuth workspace: if it’s just for authentication or a separate function and doesn’t need governed data, you don’t have to attach it. If it does need governed data, it can also attach to the same metastore.
If you need hard isolation (for compliance reasons, e.g. regulated data), you can spin up a separate metastore, but this means duplicating policies and governance.

✅ So to your point:

The Unity Catalog is created at the Databricks account level (not inside one specific workspace).
You then attach your Dev, Test, and Prod workspaces to that same metastore so governance is consistent across environments.
Your WebAuth workspace can be attached if it actually needs to interact with governed data.