If you have ever tried to query hierarchical data in Databricks like an employee organizational chart, a bill of materials, or category trees you know it used to be a headache. Historically, data engineers had to write complex Python loops in PySpark to walk through parent-child relationships step-by-step. Thankfully, that is no longer necessary. Databricks now natively supports recursive Common Table Expressions (CTEs). Using the WITH RECURSIVE clause, you can easily query hierarchies and graph data directly in Databricks SQL. Let’s break down exactly how recursive CTEs work and look…