Table utility commands

Delta tables support a number of utility commands.

For many Delta Lake operations, you enable integration with Apache Spark DataSourceV2 and Catalog APIs (since 3.0) by setting configurations when you create a new SparkSession. See Configure SparkSession.

In this article:

Remove files no longer referenced by a Delta table
Retrieve Delta table history
- History schema
- Operation metrics keys
Retrieve Delta table details
- Detail schema
Generate a manifest file
Convert a Parquet table to a Delta table
Convert an Iceberg table to a Delta table
Convert a Delta table to a Parquet table
Restore a Delta table to an earlier state
- Restore metrics
Shallow clone a Delta table
- Clone metrics
- Clone use cases
Clone Parquet or Iceberg table to Delta

Remove files no longer referenced by a Delta table

You can remove files no longer referenced by a Delta table and are older than the retention threshold by running the vacuum command on the table. vacuum is not triggered automatically. The default retention threshold for the files is 7 days. To change this behavior, see Data retention.

Important

vacuum removes all files from directories not managed by Delta Lake, ignoring directories beginning with _. If you are storing additional metadata like Structured Streaming checkpoints within a Delta table directory, use a directory name such as _checkpoints.
vacuum deletes only data files, not log files. Log files are deleted automatically and asynchronously after checkpoint operations. The default retention period of log files is 30 days, configurable through the delta.logRetentionDuration property which you set with the ALTER TABLE SET TBLPROPERTIES SQL method. See Table properties.
The ability to time travel back to a version older than the retention period is lost after running vacuum.

VACUUM eventsTable   -- vacuum files not required by versions older than the default retention period

VACUUM '/data/events' -- vacuum files in path-based table

VACUUM delta.`/data/events/`

VACUUM delta.`/data/events/` RETAIN 100 HOURS  -- vacuum files not required by versions more than 100 hours old

VACUUM eventsTable DRY RUN    -- do dry run to get the list of files to be deleted

See Configure SparkSession for the steps to enable support for SQL commands.

from delta.tables import *

deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable)  # path-based tables, or
deltaTable = DeltaTable.forName(spark, tableName)    # Hive metastore-based tables

deltaTable.vacuum()        # vacuum files not required by versions older than the default retention period

deltaTable.vacuum(100)     # vacuum files not required by versions more than 100 hours old

import io.delta.tables._

val deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable)

deltaTable.vacuum()        // vacuum files not required by versions older than the default retention period

deltaTable.vacuum(100)     // vacuum files not required by versions more than 100 hours old

import io.delta.tables.*;
import org.apache.spark.sql.functions;

DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable);

deltaTable.vacuum();        // vacuum files not required by versions older than the default retention period

deltaTable.vacuum(100);     // vacuum files not required by versions more than 100 hours old

Note

When using VACUUM, to configure Spark to delete files in parallel (based on the number of shuffle partitions) set the session configuration "spark.databricks.delta.vacuum.parallelDelete.enabled" to "true" .

See the Delta Lake APIs for Scala, Java, and Python syntax details.

Warning

It is recommended that you set a retention interval to be at least 7 days, because old snapshots and uncommitted files can still be in use by concurrent readers or writers to the table. If VACUUM cleans up active files, concurrent readers can fail or, worse, tables can be corrupted when VACUUM deletes files that have not yet been committed. You must choose an interval that is longer than the longest running concurrent transaction and the longest period that any stream can lag behind the most recent update to the table.

Delta Lake has a safety check to prevent you from running a dangerous VACUUM command. If you are certain that there are no operations being performed on this table that take longer than the retention interval you plan to specify, you can turn off this safety check by setting the Spark configuration property spark.databricks.delta.retentionDurationCheck.enabled to false.

Retrieve Delta table history

You can retrieve information on the operations, user, timestamp, and so on for each write to a Delta table by running the history command. The operations are returned in reverse chronological order. By default table history is retained for 30 days.

DESCRIBE HISTORY '/data/events/'          -- get the full history of the table

DESCRIBE HISTORY delta.`/data/events/`

DESCRIBE HISTORY '/data/events/' LIMIT 1  -- get the last operation only

DESCRIBE HISTORY eventsTable

See Configure SparkSession for the steps to enable support for SQL commands in Apache Spark.

from delta.tables import *

deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable)

fullHistoryDF = deltaTable.history()    # get the full history of the table

lastOperationDF = deltaTable.history(1) # get the last operation

import io.delta.tables._

val deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable)

val fullHistoryDF = deltaTable.history()    // get the full history of the table

val lastOperationDF = deltaTable.history(1) // get the last operation

import io.delta.tables.*;

DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable);

DataFrame fullHistoryDF = deltaTable.history();       // get the full history of the table

DataFrame lastOperationDF = deltaTable.history(1);    // fetch the last operation on the DeltaTable

See the Delta Lake APIs for Scala/Java/Python syntax details.

History schema

The output of the history operation has the following columns.

Column	Type	Description
version	long	Table version generated by the operation.
timestamp	timestamp	When this version was committed.
userId	string	ID of the user that ran the operation.
userName	string	Name of the user that ran the operation.
operation	string	Name of the operation.
operationParameters	map	Parameters of the operation (for example, predicates.)
job	struct	Details of the job that ran the operation.
notebook	struct	Details of notebook from which the operation was run.
clusterId	string	ID of the cluster on which the operation ran.
readVersion	long	Version of the table that was read to perform the write operation.
isolationLevel	string	Isolation level used for this operation.
isBlindAppend	boolean	Whether this operation appended data.
operationMetrics	map	Metrics of the operation (for example, number of rows and files modified.)
userMetadata	string	User-defined commit metadata if it was specified

+-------+-------------------+------+--------+---------+--------------------+----+--------+---------+-----------+--------------+-------------+--------------------+
|version|          timestamp|userId|userName|operation| operationParameters| job|notebook|clusterId|readVersion|isolationLevel|isBlindAppend|    operationMetrics|
+-------+-------------------+------+--------+---------+--------------------+----+--------+---------+-----------+--------------+-------------+--------------------+
|      5|2019-07-29 14:07:47|  null|    null|   DELETE|[predicate -> ["(...|null|    null|     null|          4|  Serializable|        false|[numTotalRows -> ...|
|      4|2019-07-29 14:07:41|  null|    null|   UPDATE|[predicate -> (id...|null|    null|     null|          3|  Serializable|        false|[numTotalRows -> ...|
|      3|2019-07-29 14:07:29|  null|    null|   DELETE|[predicate -> ["(...|null|    null|     null|          2|  Serializable|        false|[numTotalRows -> ...|
|      2|2019-07-29 14:06:56|  null|    null|   UPDATE|[predicate -> (id...|null|    null|     null|          1|  Serializable|        false|[numTotalRows -> ...|
|      1|2019-07-29 14:04:31|  null|    null|   DELETE|[predicate -> ["(...|null|    null|     null|          0|  Serializable|        false|[numTotalRows -> ...|
|      0|2019-07-29 14:01:40|  null|    null|    WRITE|[mode -> ErrorIfE...|null|    null|     null|       null|  Serializable|         true|[numFiles -> 2, n...|
+-------+-------------------+------+--------+---------+--------------------+----+--------+---------+-----------+--------------+-------------+--------------------+

Note

Some of the columns may be nulls because the corresponding information may not be available in your environment.
Columns added in the future will always be added after the last column.

Operation metrics keys

The history operation returns a collection of operations metrics in the operationMetrics column map.

The following table lists the map key definitions by operation.

Operation	Metric name	Description
WRITE, CREATE TABLE AS SELECT, REPLACE TABLE AS SELECT, COPY INTO
	numFiles	Number of files written.
	numOutputBytes	Size in bytes of the written contents.
	numOutputRows	Number of rows written.
STREAMING UPDATE
	numAddedFiles	Number of files added.
	numRemovedFiles	Number of files removed.
	numOutputRows	Number of rows written.
	numOutputBytes	Size of write in bytes.
DELETE
	numAddedFiles	Number of files added. Not provided when partitions of the table are deleted.
	numRemovedFiles	Number of files removed.
	numDeletedRows	Number of rows removed. Not provided when partitions of the table are deleted.
	numCopiedRows	Number of rows copied in the process of deleting files.
	executionTimeMs	Time taken to execute the entire operation.
	scanTimeMs	Time taken to scan the files for matches.
	rewriteTimeMs	Time taken to rewrite the matched files.
TRUNCATE
	numRemovedFiles	Number of files removed.
	executionTimeMs	Time taken to execute the entire operation.
MERGE
	numSourceRows	Number of rows in the source DataFrame.
	numTargetRowsInserted	Number of rows inserted into the target table.
	numTargetRowsUpdated	Number of rows updated in the target table.
	numTargetRowsDeleted	Number of rows deleted in the target table.
	numTargetRowsCopied	Number of target rows copied.
	numOutputRows	Total number of rows written out.
	numTargetFilesAdded	Number of files added to the sink(target).
	numTargetFilesRemoved	Number of files removed from the sink(target).
	executionTimeMs	Time taken to execute the entire operation.
	scanTimeMs	Time taken to scan the files for matches.
	rewriteTimeMs	Time taken to rewrite the matched files.
UPDATE
	numAddedFiles	Number of files added.
	numRemovedFiles	Number of files removed.
	numUpdatedRows	Number of rows updated.
	numCopiedRows	Number of rows just copied over in the process of updating files.
	executionTimeMs	Time taken to execute the entire operation.
	scanTimeMs	Time taken to scan the files for matches.
	rewriteTimeMs	Time taken to rewrite the matched files.
FSCK	numRemovedFiles	Number of files removed.
CONVERT	numConvertedFiles	Number of Parquet files that have been converted.
OPTIMIZE
	numAddedFiles	Number of files added.
	numRemovedFiles	Number of files optimized.
	numAddedBytes	Number of bytes added after the table was optimized.
	numRemovedBytes	Number of bytes removed.
	minFileSize	Size of the smallest file after the table was optimized.
	p25FileSize	Size of the 25th percentile file after the table was optimized.
	p50FileSize	Median file size after the table was optimized.
	p75FileSize	Size of the 75th percentile file after the table was optimized.
	maxFileSize	Size of the largest file after the table was optimized.
VACUUM
	numDeletedFiles	Number of deleted files.
	numVacuumedDirectories	Number of vacuumed directories.
	numFilesToDelete	Number of files to delete.

Operation	Metric name	Description
RESTORE
	tableSizeAfterRestore	Table size in bytes after restore.
	numOfFilesAfterRestore	Number of files in the table after restore.
	numRemovedFiles	Number of files removed by the restore operation.
	numRestoredFiles	Number of files that were added as a result of the restore.
	removedFilesSize	Size in bytes of files removed by the restore.
	restoredFilesSize	Size in bytes of files added by the restore.

Retrieve Delta table details

You can retrieve detailed information about a Delta table (for example, number of files, data size) using DESCRIBE DETAIL.

DESCRIBE DETAIL '/data/events/'

DESCRIBE DETAIL eventsTable

See Configure SparkSession for the steps to enable support for SQL commands in Apache Spark.

from delta.tables import *

deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable)

detailDF = deltaTable.detail()

import io.delta.tables._

val deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable)

val detailDF = deltaTable.detail()

import io.delta.tables.*;

DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, pathToTable);

DataFrame detailDF = deltaTable.detail();

See the Delta Lake APIs for Scala/Java/Python syntax details.

Detail schema

The output of this operation has only one row with the following schema.

Column	Type	Description
format	string	Format of the table, that is, `delta`.
id	string	Unique ID of the table.
name	string	Name of the table as defined in the metastore.
description	string	Description of the table.
location	string	Location of the table.
createdAt	timestamp	When the table was created.
lastModified	timestamp	When the table was last modified.
partitionColumns	array of strings	Names of the partition columns if the table is partitioned.
numFiles	long	Number of the files in the latest version of the table.
sizeInBytes	int	The size of the latest snapshot of the table in bytes.
properties	string-string map	All the properties set for this table.
minReaderVersion	int	Minimum version of readers (according to the log protocol) that can read the table.
minWriterVersion	int	Minimum version of writers (according to the log protocol) that can write to the table.

+------+--------------------+------------------+-----------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------+----------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------------+----------------+
|format|                  id|              name|description|            location|           createdAt|       lastModified|partitionColumns|numFiles|sizeInBytes|properties|minReaderVersion|minWriterVersion|
+------+--------------------+------------------+-----------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------+----------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------------+----------------+
| delta|d31f82d2-a69f-42e...|default.deltatable|       null|file:/Users/tuor/...|2020-06-05 12:20:...|2020-06-05 12:20:20|              []|      10|      12345|        []|               1|               2|
+------+--------------------+------------------+-----------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------+----------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------------+----------------+

Generate a manifest file

You can a generate manifest file for a Delta table that can be used by other processing engines (that is, other than Apache Spark) to read the Delta table. For example, to generate a manifest file that can be used by Presto and Athena to read a Delta table, you run the following:

GENERATE symlink_format_manifest FOR TABLE delta.`<path-to-delta-table>`

See Configure SparkSession for the steps to enable support for SQL commands in Apache Spark.

deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(<path-to-delta-table>)
deltaTable.generate("symlink_format_manifest")

val deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(<path-to-delta-table>)
deltaTable.generate("symlink_format_manifest")

DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(<path-to-delta-table>);
deltaTable.generate("symlink_format_manifest");

Convert a Parquet table to a Delta table

Convert a Parquet table to a Delta table in-place. This command lists all the files in the directory, creates a Delta Lake transaction log that tracks these files, and automatically infers the data schema by reading the footers of all Parquet files. If your data is partitioned, you must specify the schema of the partition columns as a DDL-formatted string (that is, <column-name1> <type>, <column-name2> <type>, ...).

By default, this command will collect per-file statistics (e.g. minimum and maximum values for each column). These statistics will be used at query time to provide faster queries. You can disable this statistics collection in the SQL API using NO STATISTICS.

Note

If a Parquet table was created by Structured Streaming, the listing of files can be avoided by using the _spark_metadata sub-directory as the source of truth for files contained in the table setting the SQL configuration spark.databricks.delta.convert.useMetadataLog to true.

-- Convert unpartitioned Parquet table at path '<path-to-table>'
CONVERT TO DELTA parquet.`<path-to-table>`

-- Convert unpartitioned Parquet table and disable statistics collection
CONVERT TO DELTA parquet.`<path-to-table>` NO STATISTICS

-- Convert partitioned Parquet table at path '<path-to-table>' and partitioned by integer columns named 'part' and 'part2'
CONVERT TO DELTA parquet.`<path-to-table>` PARTITIONED BY (part int, part2 int)

-- Convert partitioned Parquet table and disable statistics collection
CONVERT TO DELTA parquet.`<path-to-table>` NO STATISTICS PARTITIONED BY (part int, part2 int)

See Configure SparkSession for the steps to enable support for SQL commands in Apache Spark.

from delta.tables import *

# Convert unpartitioned Parquet table at path '<path-to-table>'
deltaTable = DeltaTable.convertToDelta(spark, "parquet.`<path-to-table>`")

# Convert partitioned parquet table at path '<path-to-table>' and partitioned by integer column named 'part'
partitionedDeltaTable = DeltaTable.convertToDelta(spark, "parquet.`<path-to-table>`", "part int")

import io.delta.tables._

// Convert unpartitioned Parquet table at path '<path-to-table>'
val deltaTable = DeltaTable.convertToDelta(spark, "parquet.`<path-to-table>`")

// Convert partitioned Parquet table at path '<path-to-table>' and partitioned by integer columns named 'part' and 'part2'
val partitionedDeltaTable = DeltaTable.convertToDelta(spark, "parquet.`<path-to-table>`", "part int, part2 int")

import io.delta.tables.*;

// Convert unpartitioned Parquet table at path '<path-to-table>'
DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.convertToDelta(spark, "parquet.`<path-to-table>`");

// Convert partitioned Parquet table at path '<path-to-table>' and partitioned by integer columns named 'part' and 'part2'
DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.convertToDelta(spark, "parquet.`<path-to-table>`", "part int, part2 int");

Note

Any file not tracked by Delta Lake is invisible and can be deleted when you run vacuum. You should avoid updating or appending data files during the conversion process. After the table is converted, make sure all writes go through Delta Lake.

Convert an Iceberg table to a Delta table

Note

It is available from Delta Lake 2.3 and above.

You can convert an Iceberg table to a Delta table in place if the underlying file format of the Iceberg table is Parquet. Similar to a conversion from a Parquet table, the conversion is in-place and there won’t be any data copy or data rewrite. The original Iceberg table and the converted Delta table have separate history, so modifying the Delta table should not affect the Iceberg table as long as the source data Parquet files are not touched or deleted.

The following command creates a Delta Lake transaction log based on the Iceberg table’s native file manifest, schema and partitioning information. The converter also collects column stats during the conversion, unless NO STATISTICS is specified.

-- Convert the Iceberg table in the path <path-to-table>.
CONVERT TO DELTA iceberg.`<path-to-table>`

-- Convert the Iceberg table in the path <path-to-table> without collecting statistics.
CONVERT TO DELTA iceberg.`<path-to-table>` NO STATISTICS

Important

An additional jar delta-iceberg is needed to use the converter. For example, bin/spark-sql --packages io.delta:delta-core_2.12:2.4.0rc1,io.delta:delta-iceberg_2.12:2.4.0rc1:....

delta-iceberg is currently not available for the Delta Lake 2.4.0 release since iceberg-spark-runtime does not support Spark 3.4 yet. It is available for Delta Lake 2.3.0.

Note

Converting Iceberg metastore tables is not supported.
Converting Iceberg tables that have experienced partition evolution is not supported.
Converting Iceberg merge-on-read tables that have experienced updates, deletions, or merges is not supported.

Convert a Delta table to a Parquet table

You can easily convert a Delta table back to a Parquet table using the following steps:

If you have performed Delta Lake operations that can change the data files (for example, delete or merge), run vacuum with retention of 0 hours to delete all data files that do not belong to the latest version of the table.
Delete the _delta_log directory in the table directory.

Restore a Delta table to an earlier state

You can restore a Delta table to its earlier state by using the RESTORE command. A Delta table internally maintains historic versions of the table that enable it to be restored to an earlier state. A version corresponding to the earlier state or a timestamp of when the earlier state was created are supported as options by the RESTORE command.

Important

You can restore an already restored table.

Restoring a table to an older version where the data files were deleted manually or by vacuum will fail. Restoring to this version partially is still possible if spark.sql.files.ignoreMissingFiles is set to true.
The timestamp format for restoring to an earlier state is yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss. Providing only a date(yyyy-MM-dd) string is also supported.

RESTORE TABLE db.target_table TO VERSION AS OF <version>
RESTORE TABLE delta.`/data/target/` TO TIMESTAMP AS OF <timestamp>

from delta.tables import *

deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, <path-to-table>)  # path-based tables, or
deltaTable = DeltaTable.forName(spark, <table-name>)    # Hive metastore-based tables

deltaTable.restoreToVersion(0) # restore table to oldest version

deltaTable.restoreToTimestamp('2019-02-14') # restore to a specific timestamp

import io.delta.tables._

val deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, <path-to-table>)
val deltaTable = DeltaTable.forName(spark, <table-name>)

deltaTable.restoreToVersion(0) // restore table to oldest version

deltaTable.restoreToTimestamp("2019-02-14") // restore to a specific timestamp

import io.delta.tables.*;

DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.forPath(spark, <path-to-table>);
DeltaTable deltaTable = DeltaTable.forName(spark, <table-name>);

deltaTable.restoreToVersion(0) // restore table to oldest version

deltaTable.restoreToTimestamp("2019-02-14") // restore to a specific timestamp

Important

Restore is considered a data-changing operation. Delta Lake log entries added by the RESTORE command contain dataChange set to true. If there is a downstream application, such as a Structured streaming job that processes the updates to a Delta Lake table, the data change log entries added by the restore operation are considered as new data updates, and processing them may result in duplicate data.

For example:

Table version	Operation	Delta log updates	Records in data change log updates
0	INSERT	AddFile(/path/to/file-1, dataChange = true)	(name = Viktor, age = 29, (name = George, age = 55)
1	INSERT	AddFile(/path/to/file-2, dataChange = true)	(name = George, age = 39)
2	OPTIMIZE	AddFile(/path/to/file-3, dataChange = false), RemoveFile(/path/to/file-1), RemoveFile(/path/to/file-2)	(No records as Optimize compaction does not change the data in the table)
3	RESTORE(version=1)	RemoveFile(/path/to/file-3), AddFile(/path/to/file-1, dataChange = true), AddFile(/path/to/file-2, dataChange = true)	(name = Viktor, age = 29), (name = George, age = 55), (name = George, age = 39)

In the preceding example, the RESTORE command results in updates that were already seen when reading the Delta table version 0 and 1. If a streaming query was reading this table, then these files will be considered as newly added data and will be processed again.

Restore metrics

RESTORE reports the following metrics as a single row DataFrame once the operation is complete:

table_size_after_restore: The size of the table after restoring.
num_of_files_after_restore: The number of files in the table after restoring.
num_removed_files: Number of files removed (logically deleted) from the table.
num_restored_files: Number of files restored due to rolling back.
removed_files_size: Total size in bytes of the files that are removed from the table.
restored_files_size: Total size in bytes of the files that are restored.

Shallow clone a Delta table

Note

It is available from Delta Lake 2.3 and above.

You can create a shallow copy of an existing Delta table at a specific version using the shallow clone command.

Any changes made to shallow clones affect only the clones themselves and not the source table, as long as they don’t touch the source data Parquet files.

The metadata that is cloned includes: schema, partitioning information, invariants, nullability. For shallow clones, stream metadata is not cloned. Metadata not cloned are the table description and user-defined commit metadata.

Important

Shallow clones reference data files in the source directory. If you run vacuum on the source table, clients will no longer be able to read the referenced data files and a FileNotFoundException will be thrown. In this case, running clone with replace over the shallow clone will repair the clone.
If a target already has a non-Delta table at that path, cloning with replace to that target will create a Delta log. Then, you can clean up any existing data by running vacuum.
If a Delta table exists in the target path, a new commit is created that includes the new metadata and new data from the source table. In the case of replace, the target table needs to be emptied first to avoid data duplication.
Cloning a table is not the same as Create Table As Select or CTAS. A shallow clone takes the metadata of the source table. Cloning also has simpler syntax: you don’t need to specify partitioning, format, invariants, nullability and so on as they are taken from the source table.
A cloned table has an independent history from its source table. Time travel queries on a cloned table will not work with the same inputs as they work on its source table. For example, if the source table was at version 100 and we are creating a new table by cloning it, the new table will have version 0, and therefore we could not run time travel queries on the new table such as SELECT * FROM tbl AS OF VERSION 99.

CREATE TABLE delta.`/data/target/` SHALLOW CLONE delta.`/data/source/` -- Create a shallow clone of /data/source at /data/target

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE db.target_table SHALLOW CLONE db.source_table -- Replace the target. target needs to be emptied

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS delta.`/data/target/` SHALLOW CLONE db.source_table -- No-op if the target table exists

CREATE TABLE db.target_table SHALLOW CLONE delta.`/data/source`

CREATE TABLE db.target_table SHALLOW CLONE delta.`/data/source` VERSION AS OF version

CREATE TABLE db.target_table SHALLOW CLONE delta.`/data/source` TIMESTAMP AS OF timestamp_expression -- timestamp can be like “2019-01-01” or like date_sub(current_date(), 1)

Clone metrics

CLONE reports the following metrics as a single row DataFrame once the operation is complete:

source_table_size: Size of the source table that’s being cloned in bytes.
source_num_of_files: The number of files in the source table.

Cloud provider permissions

If you have created a shallow clone, any user that reads the shallow clone needs permission to read the files in the original table, since the data files remain in the source table’s directory where we cloned from. To make changes to the clone, users will need write access to the clone’s directory.

Clone use cases

Machine learning flow reproduction

When doing machine learning, you may want to archive a certain version of a table on which you trained an ML model. Future models can be tested using this archived data set.

-- Trained model on version 15 of Delta table
CREATE TABLE delta.`/model/dataset` SHALLOW CLONE entire_dataset VERSION AS OF 15

Short-term experiments on a production table

To test a workflow on a production table without corrupting the table, you can easily create a shallow clone. This allows you to run arbitrary workflows on the cloned table that contains all the production data but does not affect any production workloads.

-- Perform shallow clone
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE my_test SHALLOW CLONE my_prod_table;

UPDATE my_test WHERE user_id is null SET invalid=true;
-- Run a bunch of validations. Once happy:

-- This should leverage the update information in the clone to prune to only
-- changed files in the clone if possible
MERGE INTO my_prod_table
USING my_test
ON my_test.user_id <=> my_prod_table.user_id
WHEN MATCHED AND my_test.user_id is null THEN UPDATE *;

DROP TABLE my_test;

Table property overrides

Table property overrides are particularly useful for:

Annotating tables with owner or user information when sharing data with different business units.
Archiving Delta tables and time travel is required. You can specify the log retention period independently for the archive table. For example:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE archive.my_table SHALLOW CLONE prod.my_table
TBLPROPERTIES (
  delta.logRetentionDuration = '3650 days',
  delta.deletedFileRetentionDuration = '3650 days'
)
LOCATION 'xx://archive/my_table'

Clone Parquet or Iceberg table to Delta

Note

It is available from Delta Lake 2.3 and above.

Shallow clone for Parquet and Iceberg combines functionality used to clone Delta tables and convert tables to Delta Lake, you can use clone functionality to convert data from Parquet or Iceberg data sources to managed or external Delta tables with the same basic syntax.

replace has the same limitation as Delta shallow clone, the target table must be emptied before applying replace.

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE <target_table_name> SHALLOW CLONE parquet.`/path/to/data`;

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE <target_table_name> SHALLOW CLONE iceberg.`/path/to/data`;