Databricks is launching a Software-Defined Storage ecosystem that uses the open-source OpenSharing protocol to link on-premises, edge, and private-cloud systems directly into its Data Intelligence Platform. This zero-copy approach lets teams run serverless compute and train models on local datasets under Unity Catalog governance without migrating any data.

This article breaks down how Databricks’ ai_parse_document and ai_query functions simplify PDF extraction in a proof-of-concept but introduce hidden challenges—ongoing costs, duplicate processing, non-deterministic outputs, and input noise—when you scale to a reliable production pipeline. It walks through the core issues and why you need additional system design for checkpointing, deduplication, deterministic validation, and PII handling before using it on real healthcare data.