Standalone pipelines vs. Lakeflow pipelines

Databricks offers two ways to build materialized views and streaming tables: standalone pipelines, or Lakeflow pipelines. Both run on the same declarative engine and produce Unity Catalog managed tables. The difference is how much of the pipeline you author and operate.

• A standalone materialized view or streaming table is a single dataset defined with SQL syntax. Databricks creates and manages a pipeline behind the scenes to refresh it. You create and refresh standalone datasets from a Databricks SQL warehouse, or from a notebook on serverless general compute using spark.sql(). See Standalone pipelines.
• A Lakeflow pipeline is a pipeline that you author and operate as a unit. It can contain many datasets, in SQL and Python, with dependency orchestration, lineage, and pipeline-wide operational features. See What are pipelines?.

When you create a standalone materialized view or streaming table, the managed pipeline appears on the Jobs & Pipelines page with a pipeline type of MV/ST. Datasets defined in a Lakeflow pipeline have a pipeline type of ETL.

When to use a standalone pipeline

Use standalone materialized views and streaming tables when:

• You accelerate queries or transform data with a single materialized view or streaming table.
• You work from a Databricks SQL warehouse, the SQL editor, or a notebook on serverless general compute, and schedule refreshes with SCHEDULE, TRIGGER ON UPDATE, or a SQL task in a job.
• You don't need sinks, multi-stage orchestration, or other pipeline-only features.

When to use a Lakeflow pipeline

Use a Lakeflow pipeline when:

• You build a multi-stage pipeline with intermediate datasets, where Databricks manages dependencies and lineage across the datasets. Intermediate datasets can be published to the catalog or kept private to the pipeline.
• You author tables and flows in Python.
• You write to external Delta tables or event streaming destinations using sinks (create_sink() or foreach_batch_sink()).
• You apply change data capture from a database snapshot using create_auto_cdc_from_snapshot_flow().
• You want triggered or continuous execution across the whole pipeline.

Comparison

Property	Standalone streaming table or materialized view	Pipeline streaming table or materialized view
Authoring interface	SQL syntax, from a Databricks SQL warehouse or with spark.sql() in a notebook on serverless general compute	SQL and Python
Scope	One dataset, in a pipeline that Databricks manages for you	Many datasets in one pipeline, with dependency orchestration and lineage
Execution	Triggered, with SCHEDULE, TRIGGER ON UPDATE, or a SQL task	Triggered or continuous
Pipeline-only features		Sinks, create_auto_cdc_from_snapshot_flow(), private datasets
Pipeline type label	MV/ST	ETL
Move between pipelines	Not supported; recreate the table in the target pipeline	Supported