A project is the basic organizational unit of MaxCompute, similar to a database or schema in a traditional database management system. Projects isolate users and manage access requests. Each project contains tables, resources, functions, and instances, and gives you a dedicated space to create tables, upload data, develop jobs, and allocate computing resources.
MaxCompute supports the Schema (three-layer model). A project maps to a Catalog in data lake engines or a Database in traditional databases. A Schema maps to a Database under a Catalog or a Schema under a database instance. For Schema-related operations, see Schema-related operations.
Project types
MaxCompute supports two project types: Managed Projects (internal) and external projects.
Managed projects
A Managed Project is the standard project type. After activating MaxCompute, create a Managed Project before doing any development, analysis, or operations and maintenance (O&M) work.
Data in a Managed Project is isolated by default—access to objects in another project requires explicit security authorization. To share resources across projects, use cross-project resource access based on packages.
If you use DataWorks to create a MaxCompute project, create a DataWorks workspace first. The workspace name may differ from the associated MaxCompute project name—always specify the project name when developing data. For workspace modes, see Basic mode and standard mode.
External projects
External projects provide read access to data in Hive databases of Hadoop clusters or tables in Data Lake Formation (DLF).
When to use external projects:
Access and query Hive table data in existing Hadoop clusters
Query tables managed by DLF without migrating data
Key constraints:
External projects cannot be created or used independently—use them from the Lake and Warehouse Integration (Data Lakehouse) page in the DataWorks console. For details, see Lakehouse of MaxCompute.
Jobs cannot run in external projects. Associate an external project with a Managed Project and use
<external_project_name>.<table_name>to access its data. For details, see Use SQL statements to manage an external project.External projects are free of charge. Query costs are billed to the associated MaxCompute project.
Next steps
Create a project: Create a MaxCompute project
Manage a project: Project operations
Secure your data: Security operations
Control resource usage: Set a quota to prevent any single user or project from consuming excessive resources. See Quota.