Delta Sharing is an open protocol developed by Databricks that enables secure, real-time sharing of data across organizations without requiring recipients to have a Databricks account. It is specifically designed for scenarios where external partners need read-only access to data stored in Delta format. With Delta Sharing, data providers create a share and grant access to recipients via a secure mechanism (such as a profile file or URL-based access), ensuring that the data cannot be modified by the consumer. This approach eliminates the need for data duplication or manual file transfers, maintaining data freshness and governance. Option B is incorrect because Unity Catalog governs internal access within an organization, not external sharing without accounts. Option C is inefficient and breaks data lineage and freshness. Option D violates security best practices by granting excessive permissions. Delta Sharing ensures fine-grained access control, auditability, and secure external collaboration, making it the correct solution for this requirement.
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