In Unity Catalog, managed tables and external tables have different lifecycle behavior. When you drop a managed table, Databricks removes the table metadata and also schedules deletion of the underlying managed data files according to the managed-table retention behavior. By contrast, when you drop an external table, Unity Catalog removes only the table metadata and does not delete the underlying files in cloud storage. This distinction exists specifically so that external data can remain available to systems outside Databricks. In the scenario described, ephemeral staging outputs that should disappear completely are best represented by managed tables, while tables backed by shared cloud storage should be external tables so that dropping them does not remove files used by downstream jobs. Therefore, option C is the correct answer. Options A, B, and D contradict documented Unity Catalog behavior because external table files are not automatically deleted, while managed table data is lifecycle-managed by Databricks.
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