Which feature allows referencing data without copying in lakehouse context?

Which feature allows referencing data without copying in lakehouse context?

• A. Notebooks
• B. lakehouse shortcuts
• C. Dataflows
• D. VACUUM

Answer: (B)

Referencing data without duplicating it in a lakehouse relies on a lightweight pointer to where the data actually sits, rather than making a new copy. Lakehouse shortcuts serve this purpose by acting as metadata references that point to a dataset stored elsewhere in the lakehouse catalog or storage. You can query through the shortcut as if the data were part of your workspace, but the underlying data remains in place, so no additional storage is consumed and there’s a single source of truth. This approach enables easy cross-database or cross-workspace access and simplifies governance because you’re not duplicating data across systems. In contrast, interactive notebooks are tools for analysis, dataflows are ETL pipelines that may produce new datasets, and VACUUM is a maintenance command to reclaim space—none of these provide a built-in mechanism to reference data without copying in the lakehouse.

Referencing data without duplicating it in a lakehouse relies on a lightweight pointer to where the data actually sits, rather than making a new copy. Lakehouse shortcuts serve this purpose by acting as metadata references that point to a dataset stored elsewhere in the lakehouse catalog or storage. You can query through the shortcut as if the data were part of your workspace, but the underlying data remains in place, so no additional storage is consumed and there’s a single source of truth.

This approach enables easy cross-database or cross-workspace access and simplifies governance because you’re not duplicating data across systems. In contrast, interactive notebooks are tools for analysis, dataflows are ETL pipelines that may produce new datasets, and VACUUM is a maintenance command to reclaim space—none of these provide a built-in mechanism to reference data without copying in the lakehouse.