Data Sharing Made Easy with Delta Sharing

The U.S. is so vast, it’s easy to wonder how they pull off a once-in-a-decade census. How does the U.S. Census Department do this? With an open-source protocol known as Delta Sharing. 

Delta Sharing streamlines data gathering by enabling collaboration and data exchange across government agencies, local authorities, and census counters. The innovative protocol allows real-time updates and secure data transfers, ensuring up-to-date information in every corner of the nation. And while the government isn’t known for its cutting edge technology, businesses have taken quick notice of Delta Share’s potential.

By harnessing Delta Sharing, businesses can improve their strategies, resource allocation, and agility. As industries become increasingly data-driven, embracing technology like Delta Sharing becomes imperative for companies aspiring to stay competitive.

What is Delta Sharing?

Traditional data-sharing methods, such as FTP, emailing copies of flat files, or through an API, comes with frustrating limitations. They lack scalability, require manual infrastructure maintenance, and are slow. Collaboration and real-time access are usually so challenging as to prevent teams from working together. 

There are also security concerns. Traditional tools may not adequately protect sensitive information from unauthorized access. The bigger the data volumes, the harder they are to manage, impacting productivity and data security. 

Delta Sharing is an open protocol developed by Databricks. It facilitates secure data sharing between organizations, regardless of the computing platforms they employ. Data providers can use Delta Shares to securely share their data through various platforms. This method removes the need to duplicate data or restrict access to a limited number of clients. Several third-party tools are available to efficiently manage, govern, audit, and monitor the usage of shared data.

Real-time data synchronization

Delta Sharing brings real-time data synchronization to the table with flair. The protocol ensures data updates are available across different platforms and enterprises in real time. For instance, when a data provider makes changes to a shared Delta Lake table in Databricks, Delta Lake metadata automatically records these changes. Data recipients can then easily access the shared table and see the latest updates.

The protocol’s integration into data governance platforms, such as Databricks’ Unity Catalog, enables immediate and secure data transfers, making it indispensable for streaming analytics applications. Its real-time synchronization capabilities empower businesses and organizations to access the most up-to-date information, facilitating timely decision-making in a dynamic data-sharing environment.

Collaboration and integration

Delta Sharing acts as a bridge between business partners, effortlessly connecting diverse cloud environments while ensuring data privacy within a secure hosted space. Its innovative approach enables multiple clients to efficiently share and access a single dataset as large as a terabyte through cloud storage systems.

Collaborators can work together on their preferred cloud platform in multiple languages like SQL, R, Scala, Java, and Python. The result is a harmonious data-sharing experience. 

Delta Sharing’s real-time synchronization capabilities ensure all stakeholders can access the most updated information, fostering easy communication and informed decision-making. The efficient flow of real-time data empowers teams to work together more effectively and respond swiftly to changing business conditions. Depending on the platform, users can optimize efficiency by leveraging predefined templates, notebooks, and dashboards for everyday use cases, thereby speeding up the time to gain valuable insights.

Use cases and benefits of Delta Sharing

Delta Sharing not only enhances collaboration, it also provides real-time data sharing capabilities for analytics and insights. The use cases below illustrate how these benefits might apply within the healthcare industry. They demonstrate how Delta Sharing enables effective collaboration, real-time data sharing for analytics and insights, and efficient data resource management.

Real-time data sharing for analytics and insights

Delta Sharing’s integration capabilities make it an ideal solution for fostering collaboration and data sharing among disparate industries. Let’s consider a scenario where a healthcare provider network, a pharmaceutical research company, and a medical device manufacturer collaborate to improve patient outcomes.

The healthcare provider network securely stores their patient data in a structured format, leveraging the Delta Lake table with the help of Delta Sharing. The provider grants controlled access to this data to two key players in the healthcare industry—the pharmaceutical research company and the medical device manufacturer—via the Delta Sharing protocol. The pharmaceutical research company gains immediate access to de-identified patient data directly from the provider’s Delta Lake table, unlocking additional opportunities for advanced research and groundbreaking discoveries.

Similarly, the medical device company accesses the same dataset in real time to analyze patient demographics and medical device usage patterns. Innovation like this leads to the development of more targeted and effective medical devices.

By leveraging Delta Sharing’s real-time synchronization capabilities, all three companies access the latest data, enabling effective collaboration, informed decision-making, and rapid response to changing healthcare conditions. Data sharing allows them to effectively pool their expertise and resources, driving innovation in the healthcare industry and ultimately improving medical research and patient care.

Cost-effectiveness and scalability of data sharing

Delta Sharing is a cost-effective and scalable solution for real-time data sharing. This unified data-sharing protocol helps the healthcare provider network, pharmaceutical research company, and medical device manufacturer avoid the expenses and complexities of data integration solutions. Delta Sharing is a financially viable option for enterprises of all sizes.

Delta Sharing enables data providers to share data directly from their existing cloud object store without replication, reducing storage costs. The protocol also eliminates the need to set up separate computing environments, making the data-sharing process more efficient and cost-effective.

As data sharing needs to expand, Delta Sharing’s scalable architecture steps up to the challenge; it can handle larger data volumes while maintaining top-notch performance. This cost-effective and scalable approach empowers healthcare-related companies to allocate resources wisely and direct their focus to crucial research and development efforts.

Overcoming challenges and ensuring data privacy

Delta Sharing ensures the highest levels of data security even with data sharing. However in some cases, it may not be suitable for data discovery.

Delta Sharing doesn’t solve for internal or partner use cases

Delta Sharing’s main focus is on external data sharing, which may limit its effectiveness for internal or partner use cases. The absence of data discoverability and productization features creates challenges for users to easily find and consume the data they have access to. 

Unlike alternative solutions, Delta Sharing emphasizes sharing raw data assets between organizations in a platform-agnostic manner. Although it enables secure connections with tools like PowerBI or Tableau, it lacks a comprehensive concept of internal or partner data sharing within Delta Shares. Instead, users must request specific datasets through work tickets and await administrator approval, making the data sharing process inefficient.

Additionally, Delta Sharing’s reliance on a table- or view-based approach may present drawbacks. Data consumers often require access to specific datasets rather than entire tables or views. While some may perceive view-based sharing as a simplified form of data productization, it essentially provides a streamlined representation of the raw data. Consequently, the majority of data work and processing still falls on the data consumer, adding complexity to meet their consumability needs.

Addressing data governance and security concerns

Delta Sharing addresses data governance and security concerns in multiple ways. The platform implements identity verification, authentication, and auditing to ensure a comprehensive and effortless data sharing experience.

Delta Sharing’s security features include: 

• Data encryption: To secure shared data, Delta Sharing employs the AES-256 encryption algorithm. This encryption protects data both at rest and during transit, guarding against unauthorized access
• Data access control: Delta Sharing offers precise control over shared data through a role-based access control (RBAC) system. With RBAC, you can create distinct roles and permissions for each user. This approach ensures that data is accessible only to authorized individuals 
• Auditing: Delta Sharing has auditing capabilities that monitor and track all instances of shared data access and user actions. The audit feature detects potential unauthorized access or data misuse, reinforcing data security and compliance
• Data lineage: With Delta Sharing, tracing the lineage of shared data is effortless. You can obtain insights into data usage through lineage tracing, which is essential for troubleshooting data quality issues and maintaining compliance with regulations. The protocol stores this valuable information in the Delta Lake metadata, accessible through the Delta Sharing API

Compliance with data protection regulations

Data-sharing platforms must adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) due to their significant impact on data privacy and protection. Legal frameworks impose strict rules and requirements on the collection, processing, and sharing of personal data to guard privacy. Compliance with these regulations is crucial for data-sharing platforms to avoid potential legal penalties, fines, and damage to their reputation. Delta Sharing ensures compliance with data protection regulations using its many security features, such as end-to-end encryption, role-based access controls, and auditing. 

Delta Sharing also enables efficient granting, tracking, and auditing of access to shared data from a single origin point, which also supports compliance efforts. Delta Sharing allows users to effortlessly trace the lineage of shared data, showcasing a clear and transparent data flow that aligns with regulatory requirements. The platform even supports pseudonymization so users can share data without revealing individual identities.

Best practices for maintaining data privacy while leveraging Delta Sharing

Data security and compliance are paramount considerations when leveraging Delta Sharing. To ensure the utmost safety of shared data and efficient access tracking and management, fully implementing the platform’s security features is crucial. To maintain data privacy while optimizing Delta Sharing and customer data enrichment, follow these tips:

• Exercise discretion in sharing data and only collaborate with trusted individuals or organizations
• Ensure that your terms of service and privacy policies are clear and concise, outlining how users should use data 
• Offer users the option to opt out of data sharing if they prefer not to participate
• Regularly monitor data usage to ensure adherence to your policies

By following these measures, you can safeguard data privacy while leveraging the benefits of Delta Sharing and customer data enrichment.

Delta Sharing drives business success

Delta Sharing empowers data providers to securely share their valuable data assets with other enterprises. As businesses increasingly adopt Delta Sharing as their go-to data-sharing protocol, they embrace a more positive approach to sharing their data assets with other organizations.

Delta Sharing enables users to directly share and access data with external partners without the burden of data replication complexities. To elevate data sharing capabilities, however, enterprise users should consider Revelate.

Revelate’s data fulfillment platform is a powerful solution, streamlining effective data management with robust tools for data governance, audit, and monitoring. Its integration with Delta Sharing enhances external data-sharing capabilities, fostering collaboration among enterprises and taking data sharing to new heights.

By leveraging Revelate, users can gain a significant competitive advantage in the market by enabling data providers to meet their customers where they are at, enabling them to consume a delta share directly into their Delta Table. The platform excels in integrating, refining, and packaging data for specific use cases or external distribution. Delta Sharing further streamlines the process of sharing these valuable data products with other organizations, enabling collaboration and data exchange.

Ultimately, the combination of Revelate and Delta Sharing empowers enterprises with comprehensive data productization capabilities, unlocking the full value of their data assets and driving business success.

Unlock Your Data's Potential with Revelate

Revelate provides a suite of capabilities for data sharing and data commercialization for our customers to fully realize the value of their data. Harness the power of your data today!

Get Started