Databricks Platform Admin flashcards

30 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Account administrator

An administrative role with account-level scope under the supported Databricks model, distinct from workspace operations and data-object ownership.

Identity federation

The supported account-level identity arrangement connecting relevant users, groups and service principals with assigned workspaces, distinct from granting every data privilege.

Run as identity

The principal whose relevant rights a configured job uses for its work, which may differ from the person triggering a run.

External location

A governed association between a cloud-storage path and relevant storage credential in Unity Catalog, with its own permissions and supported scope.

Storage credential

A Unity Catalog object representing relevant cloud-storage access authority, distinct from an external connection to a relational database or a table privilege.

Parent usage privilege

A right needed to use the containing catalog or schema under the actual privilege model, separate from the operation granted on a child table.

Compute policy

A supported collection of configuration constraints whose use rights and coverage need review separately from data authorization and other compute forms.

Run queue

A supported mechanism retaining eligible work pending available execution capacity, whose behavior is not determined by the concurrency limit alone.

Relational database

A collection of data organised as tables of rows and columns, where relationships between tables are expressed through shared key values rather than physical pointers. Queries combine these tables at run time.

Table

The basic storage structure in a relational database: a named set of rows, each row having the same set of named columns with a defined data type per column. Also called a relation or entity.

Row

A single record in a table, holding one value for each column. Also called a tuple or record. Rows are unordered in the relational model; only an ORDER BY clause gives a result a defined sequence.

Column

A named attribute of a table that holds one value per row, with a declared data type and optional constraints. Also called a field or attribute. All values in a column share the same type.

Primary key

A column or set of columns whose values uniquely identify each row in a table. It must be unique and non-null, and a table can have only one primary key, though that key may span several columns.

Candidate key

Any minimal set of columns that could serve as the primary key because it uniquely identifies every row. One candidate key is chosen as the primary key; the others are usually enforced as unique constraints.

Foreign key

A column or set of columns in one table whose values must match a candidate key value in another table, or be null. It enforces referential integrity between parent and child tables.

Referential integrity

The rule that every non-null foreign key value must correspond to an existing key value in the referenced table. The database rejects inserts, updates and deletes that would break this rule.

Unique constraint

A rule that no two rows may hold the same value in the specified column or column combination. Unlike a primary key, a unique constraint usually permits null values and a table may have several of them.

NOT NULL constraint

A column rule that forbids the absence of a value, so every row must supply a value for that column. It is a column-level check and is implied automatically by a primary key.

CHECK constraint

A declared predicate that rejects rows for which the condition evaluates FALSE. UNKNOWN, including many NULL-related results, can pass, so required presence needs a separate NOT NULL constraint.

DEFAULT constraint

A value the database supplies automatically when an INSERT statement omits the column. It applies only when no value is given; explicitly inserting NULL stores NULL rather than the default.

NULL

A marker meaning that a value is unknown or not applicable, distinct from zero or an empty string. Comparisons with NULL yield unknown, so tests must use IS NULL or IS NOT NULL.

Three-valued logic

The rule that SQL conditions evaluate to true, false or unknown, with unknown arising whenever NULL takes part in a comparison or arithmetic expression. A WHERE clause keeps only rows whose condition is true.

COALESCE

A function returning the first of its arguments that is not null, or null if all are null. Commonly used to substitute a default for missing values in query output.

Data type

The declared category of values a column may hold, such as integer, decimal, character string, date or Boolean. The type determines allowed operations, storage size and which implicit conversions the database permits.

CHAR versus VARCHAR

CHAR stores fixed-length strings padded with spaces to the declared length, while VARCHAR stores variable-length strings up to a maximum. CHAR suits uniform codes; VARCHAR suits names and addresses of varying length.

CAST

An operator or function that converts a value from one data type to another, for example turning a string into a number or a date. It may be explicit in the statement or applied implicitly by the database.

Implicit conversion

Automatic type conversion the database performs when operands of different types meet in an expression or comparison. It can silently change results or prevent an index from being used, so explicit conversion is safer.

CREATE TABLE

The DDL statement that defines a new table by naming it and listing its columns with data types and constraints. Variants can also copy structure from an existing table or create the table only if absent.

Least Privilege

The principle that users and systems should be granted only the minimum access rights necessary to perform their tasks, reducing the potential damage from accidents or malicious activity.

Separation of Duties

A control that divides critical tasks among different individuals so that no single person can complete a sensitive action alone, helping to prevent fraud and errors.