Data engineering·Files, formats and table layers
the warehouse queries files it does not own, so dropping the table leaves the data exactly where it was.
External table
Also calledforeign table, unmanaged table
A table definition in a query engine pointing at data stored and managed elsewhere. It is how a warehouse reads a lake without ingesting it, and how the same files can be shared between engines. The trade is that the engine cannot make guarantees about data it does not control: statistics go stale, files can change under a running query, and nothing stops another process writing something the schema does not describe.