30 Apr 2025 • Calgary, AB
I’ve spent the last few weeks deploying Python Flask and Streamlit apps on #Databricks. The experience has been (mostly) great, but … the platform is brand new and the docs are thin. Here’s what cost me the most time—so you can skip the pain:
1. Beware the Reserved Environment Variables
Databricks reserves certain env-vars and hides the list at the
bottom of the docs.
Read it (link)
and grep your codebase; rename anything that collides.
2. Unity Catalog Volumes
- Deploy the app in the same workspace as the volume.
- Grant volume/catalog permissions to your app’s service principal (or the user running it).
- Use the Workspace API for file access—skip the headache of other endpoints.
3. Time Saved
Follow those rules and you’ll ship in hours, not days. Good luck—and huge kudos to the Databricks team for such an intuitive feature set!