The clerk of courts needs Unity Catalog storage for scanned PDF evidence packages that enrichment jobs will read as files. Which object should they create?

The clerk of courts needing Unity Catalog storage for scanned PDF evidence packages that enrichment jobs will read as files should create a Unity Catalog volume. Volumes are UC-governed storage for non-tabular files (PDFs, images, documents) with identity-based access control, so enrichment jobs can read evidence packages as files while remaining inside the civic governance model—unlike ungoverned ad-hoc cloud paths.

A managed Delta table with a binary column to store the PDF evidence files is a tabular construct and a poor fit for binary evidence packages; Delta tables manage structured rows, they do not replace file storage. An external location with a storage credential to store the PDF evidence files is just a cloud-path registration, not a governed file securable, and it lacks UC volume semantics. A Unity Catalog schema with a managed location to store the PDF evidence files is a namespace for tabular output, not a governed durable repository for court PDFs.

Exam caveat: tables/views for tabular data; volumes for files; locations/external locations for storage credentials backing them. Do not store large binary evidence only as table columns without a deliberate design—volumes are the exam’s intended file securable. Jobs still need READ volume privileges to process PDFs.

Operational check: create a UC volume in the courts catalog/schema, grant enrichment job principals READ, land scanned PDFs there, and point file-reader stages at the volume path rather than unmanaged scratch folders.