Introducing Snowflake CLI

Snowflake CLI’s open-source nature means that developers can leverage the community’s collective knowledge and contributions to improve and enhance the tool. By using Snowflake CLI, developers can expect a streamlined, efficient experience that empowers them to work with Snowflake in new and innovative ways. Snowflake CLI is a powerful and flexible tool that helps developers streamline their workflow and optimize their Snowflake experience.

As a command-line interface (CLI), Snowflake CLI provides several benefits for developers, such as:

  • Speed and efficiency

    A CLI allows developers to perform tasks quickly and efficiently by executing commands from the terminal without needing a graphical user interface. This can save developers significant time and effort, especially when performing repetitive or complex tasks.

  • Automation

    A CLI can automate tasks and workflows, such as building, testing, CI/CD, and deploying applications. CLI can help developers streamline their development process and reduce the risk of errors or inconsistencies.

  • Portability

    A CLI is often platform-independent and can be used across different operating systems and environments. Developers can work more easily on multiple projects or collaborate with others who use different systems.

  • Version control

    A CLI can be integrated with version control systems like Git to manage changes and track code history, which can help developers collaborate more effectively, resolve conflicts, and document changes appropriately.

  • Customization

    A CLI can be customized and extended by using modules and scripts, so developers can tailor it to their needs and preferences. Automating common tasks and workflows can help developers work more efficiently and effectively.

  • Accessibility

    CLI can be accessed remotely, so developers can work on servers and other remote systems without a graphical interface.

How does Snowflake CLI differ from SnowSQL?

SnowSQL is the command-line client for connecting to Snowflake to execute SQL queries and perform all DDL and DML operations, including loading data into and unloading data out of database tables.

The Snowflake CLI command-line client, in contrast, focuses primarily on managing workloads and applications that connect to Snowflake. Snowflake CLI lets you locally run and debug Snowflake apps, with the following benefits:

  • You can search, create, and upload Python packages that might not be supported in Anaconda yet.

  • Snowflake CLI supports Snowpark Python user-defined functions and stored procedures, warehouses, and Streamlit apps.

  • You can define packages by using requirements.txt, with dependencies automatically added through integration with Anaconda at deployment time.

  • Snowflake CLI can include packages that are identified in requirements.txt—but aren’t yet in Anaconda—in the application package deployed to Snowflake. (This feature only works with packages that don’t rely on native libraries).

  • When you update existing applications, code and dependencies are automatically altered as needed.

  • Deployment artifacts are automatically managed and uploaded to Snowflake stages.

Snowflake plans to continue enhancing Snowflake CLI to provide developers a robust tool for leveraging all of the SnowSQL capabilities in a new open source CLI.

Language: English