Databricks Online Tables

Databricks Online Tables is retired, replaced by Databricks Online Feature Stores (retired January 2026).

Databricks Online Tables → Databricks Online Feature Stores

A read-only, row-oriented copy of a Unity Catalog Delta table, kept in sync by a serverless pipeline, that gave Model Serving, Feature Serving, and RAG applications low-latency lookups without a third-party online store.

• It was a Delta table turned sideways: a read-only copy of the columnar source stored row by row, because looking up one customer is faster when you do not have to open every column. 🔗
• Turning columns into rows was not free - the docs warn the row-expanded copy can be as much as 100x larger than the compressed Delta table shown in Catalog Explorer, which is how a modest table could eat into the 2TB per-metastore preview cap. 🔗
• It retired without ever growing up: the same legacy page that declares it deprecated still says online tables are in Public Preview, so this is a feature that went straight from preview to gone. 🔗

⚠ Limitations: One online table per source table, at most 1000 columns, no ARRAY, MAP, or STRUCT primary keys, string columns capped at 64KB and rows at 2MB, a metastore-wide cap of 2TB of uncompressed data during the preview, and roughly 750 MB/sec of read throughput per metastore. 🔗

Category

AI / ML

Deprecated

January 2026🔗

Access ended

January 2026🔗

Also known as

Online tables, online tables (legacy), Unity Catalog online tables

Verified

2026-09-11