POST_START

Creating a Restricted Production Reporting View for Analysts

I recently needed to create a restricted reporting view for the data analysts team so they could access only the active orders from our production system. This view would allow them to analyze current orders without exposing sensitive or outdated data. To achieve this, I followed a few key steps using Databricks Unity Catalog.

Creating the Reporting View

I started by creating a view called active_orders in the production.reporting schema. This view would select all columns from the orders table in the production.sales schema where the status is ‘ACTIVE’. I wanted to ensure that only the relevant data was exposed for analysis.

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW production.reporting.active_orders AS SELECT * FROM production.sales.orders WHERE status = 'ACTIVE';

I noticed that the view was created successfully, and the data was filtered to only include active orders. This was a good first step in making sure the analysts had access to the right data.

Granting Select Permissions to Analysts

Next, I needed to grant the SELECT permission on the active_orders view to the data_analysts group. This would allow them to query the view without having access to other tables or data in the schema. I made sure to use the exact syntax required by Unity Catalog to grant the privilege.

GRANT SELECT ON VIEW production.reporting.active_orders TO `data_analysts`;

I verified that the grant was applied successfully. The data_anal'ts group now had access to the view, but no other data. This was an important step in maintaining data security and access control.

Verifying the Grants

To double-check that the permissions were correctly assigned, I ran the SHOW GRANTS command on the active_orders view. This helped me confirm that the data_analysts group had access, and also showed that the reporting_engineers group had been granted access as well, which was expected.

SHOW GRANTS ON VIEW production.reporting.active_orders;

principal	actionType	objectType
data_analysts	SELECT	VIEW
reporting_engineers	SELECT	VIEW

I reviewed the output and confirmed that the correct groups had the appropriate permissions. This ensured that the view was accessible to the right people and that there was no unnecessary access to the data.

Conclusion

By creating the active_orders view and granting the appropriate permissions, I was able to provide the data analysts with the data they needed to perform their work while maintaining strict access controls. This approach helped ensure that our production data remained secure and that only authorized users could access it.