External tables store their data in locations outside of the predefined managed storage location associated with the metastore, unity catalog, or schema. An external table references an external storage path by using a LOCATION clause. For more information on external tables, see the Databricks documentation.
Note: You can read and write data to external tables of file type Delta in Databricks.
You can use the following data types when you create an external table:
•Array*
•Binary
•Bigint
•Boolean
•Date
•Decimal
•Double
•Float
•Int
•Map*
•Smallint
•String
•Struct*
•Tinyint
•Timestamp
*Applies only to mappings in advanced mode.
When you create an external table, specify the table location when you create a new target at runtime. For more information, see Create a target table at runtime