Alteryx Analytics Cloud (AAC) now supports Unity Catalog volumes as alternative to the personal staging location that has been deprecated by Databricks. The Unity Catalog can now be used as internal staging location for writing data to Databricks from Alteryx Analytics Cloud (AAC).
To configure Databricks Unity Catalog as a staging location for your AAC instance, as admin complete the following steps:
Generate a Personal Access Token for Databricks admin;
Create a new Unity Catalog volume to be assigned to your AAC Databricks workspace;
Create a new Databricks workspace in your AAC account;
Use your newly created AAC Databricks workspace to configure a new connection.
Navigate to your Databricks account, select your user icon at the top right corner and select settings.
Select Developer.
Next to Access tokens, select Manage.
Select Generate new token.
Copy and save the token value.
As account admin, go to your Databricks workspace.
Navigate to catalog, choose a catalog and a schema, and select Create Volume.
Specify the volume name, select the volume type, provide descriptive name (for example "aacp_volume"), and select Create.
Save the volume name, you will need it in next steps.
As AAC admin, navigate to your AAC account, select your user icon and choose workspace admin.
Navigate to Databricks tab and select New workspace.
Specify your Databricks workspace url and the personal access token you collected in previous step and select Authenticate.
In the new workspace configuration, provide a descriptive name for your Databricks workspace in AAC, and provide required configuration.
Select the SQL warehouse.
In the Unity Catalog Volumes configuration, perform the following steps to configure your AAC workspace with existing volume:
Select Existing volumes option.
Select the catalog name of the unity catalog which you created your volume in.
Select the schema name which you created your volume in.
Select the volume name you specified in the Step 2 of this guide.
Optionally: If you want to create a new volume for your AAC workspace, you may choose to create a new Volume. In the Unity Catalog Volumes configuration, perform the following steps to configure your AAC workspace:
Select the catalog name of the unity catalog which you created your volume in.
Select the schema name which you created your volume in.
Provide descriptive name for your Unity Catalog Volume.
Go through remaining configuration and select Save.
As an AAC workspace user, navigate to Connections.
Select Create connection and choose Databricks from the list of connections.
Set a descriptive connection name, select the Databricks workspace your admin has configured for you and provide your Personal Access Token (PAT).
Select Test connection to validate the connection.
Select Create to save the connection.
You can now use your newly created Databricks connection in AAC workflow.