Data movement from a database to a distributed file system

Provided are techniques for data movement. An activity is created that overrides existing security, that is associated with a user, that defines one or more source tables in a relational database and one or more target tables that are available to the user for the activity, and that provides security credentials of an author of the activity for use by the user, wherein the one or more target tables represent data in one or more target files in a file system. The activity is executed using the security credentials of the author to move data in a source table of the one or more source tables to a target file of the one or more target files, wherein a target table of the one or more target tables is defined over the target file. Access is provided to the user to the moved data using the target table.