Skip to main content

Starter Notes

Updated Jan 14, 2022 ·

Overview​

Snowflake is a data warehousing platform used by companies for storing and analyzing large datasets.

  • A place for storing data for analysis and reporting.
  • Data is analyzed using SQL queries.

Snowflake is easy to use and doesn’t require managing hardware or software manually.

  • Start using Snowflake right after signing up.
  • No setup needed, Snowflake handles infrastructure.

Features​

Snowflake has several features to streamline data storage, transformation, and analysis.

  • Data Lake integration: Connect with cloud storage services like AWS, GCP, and Azure.
  • Data pipelines: Organize, clean, and apply rules to data.
  • Data privacy: Ensures "least-privilege access" to sensitive data.

Snowflake's Data Architecture​

Snowflake's architecture has three main layers for processing and storing large datasets.

  • Cloud Services: Manages access, optimizes queries, and tracks usage.
  • Query Processing: Uses virtual warehouses and MPP to process queries.
  • Database Storage: Compresses and stores data in a columnar format.

Connecting to Snowflake​

There are different ways to connect:

  • Web Interface (Snowsight) – A user-friendly UI for running queries
  • Worksheets – Interface for executing and managing SQL queries
  • Notebooks – Supports both SQL and Python, useful for data pipelines
  • Drivers – ODBC and JDBC allow external applications to connect
  • SnowSQL – Command-line tool for direct database access

Snowsight UI​

Snowsight is a UI tool for interacting with Snowflake, primarily used for data analysis.

Marketplace​

Snowsight includes a marketplace for datasets that can be used for analysis.

  • Free and paid datasets from Snowflake providers.
  • Helps bring in external data to enhance insights.