Databricks Breaking News: 2026 Week 3: 12 January 2026 to 18 January 2026
Summary
Databricks Runtime 18 is now Generally Available, offering Spark 4.1 and improved identifier/parameter maker availability. New features include Lakeflow Connect for row filtering during ingestion, Codex models (GBT Codex Max and Mini) for code development, and Databricks One improvements like favorites and data preview in Gen Rooms.
Summary generated by brickster.ai from the video transcript.
More from databricks MVP Hubert Dudek
NewsDatabricks News: ZeroOps, DABs, Indexes, Genie, sandboxes, migration from PowerBI, secrets
Zero Ops automatically detects errors in jobs and data quality with lineage analysis and proposes code fixes, while DABs now default to direct mode instead of Terraform with automatic state migration. Full-text search indexes deliver 400x faster queries on billion-row tables, Genie automatically converts PowerBI dashboards to Databricks metric views, and Unity Catalog secrets support granular read and reference-only permissions.
NewsDatabricks News: RT Lakehouse (Reyden), Lakebase, TTL
This video highlights recent Databricks updates, including the beta release of the high-performance "Raiden" real-time lakehouse engine and new lakeflow connectors. It also demonstrates administrative changes to user groups, new time data types, predictive optimization TTL deletes, user home volumes, and advanced search capabilities in Lakebase.
