October 2022¶

ALTER PROCEDURE Command: Support Added for Tags¶

With this release, Snowflake adds support to set a tag on a procedure with the corresponding ALTER PROCEDURE ALTER PROCEDURE statement:

Function Updates: SYSTEM$GET_TAG & TAG_REFERENCES (Information Schema): Support Added for Stored Procedures¶

With this release, Snowflake adds support to specify stored procedures as the object domain when calling the SYSTEM$GET_TAG function and when calling the TAG_REFERENCES Information Schema table function. With both functions, specify PROCEDURE for the object domain.

New Functions¶

The following new functions have been introduced:

Use the new functions with SnowCD. The deprecated functions will no longer be supported on January 10, 2023. Please update all workloads to replace the deprecated functions with the new functions. For details, see the list of Deprecated Features (in the Community).

New CREATE ACCOUNT Parameter¶

With this release, organization administrators who create new accounts using the CREATE ACCOUNT command have the option of implementing key pair authentication for the initial administrative user of the account. Previously, the initial user always had username/password credentials.

The following CREATE ACCOUNT parameter has been added:

For more details, see CREATE ACCOUNT.

Anonymous Procedures — Preview¶

With this release, we are pleased to announce the preview of anonymous procedures, which are like stored procedures but not stored for later use. Also, unlike stored procedures, you do not need CREATE PROCEDURE schema privileges to create an anonymous procedure.

You can both create and call an anonymous procedure by specifying a CALL command prefixed by a WITH clause. The WITH clause specifies the procedure’s details, including parameters, return type, handler language, and so on. The CALL command calls that procedure.

For more details, see CALL (with Anonymous Procedure).

Search Optimization Service: Support for Column Configuration, Substring and Regular Expression Searches, VARIANT, and GEOGRAPHY Available in All Regions — Preview¶

We are pleased to announce that preview support for enabling search optimization for specific columns in a table is now available in all regions.

The preview of support for queries with the following types of predicates in the search optimization service is also now available in all regions:

• Predicates that use string patterns (e.g. LIKE, ILIKE, etc.) and POSIX regular expressions (e.g. REGEXP).

• Predicates that use fields in VARIANT, ARRAY, and OBJECT columns.

• Predicates that use selected geospatial functions (queries of GEOGRAPHY columns).

You can enable support for these methods for specific columns and VARIANT fields in a table. For example, for a given column, you can enable support for optimizing equality and string pattern searches.

Preview features are intended for evaluation and testing purposes and are not recommended for use in production.

For more information, see Search Optimization Service.

PARSE_XML and CHECK_XML Functions: New Argument for Disabling Automatic Conversion¶

By default, the PARSE_XML and CHECK_XML functions attempt to convert numeric and Boolean values to their corresponding Snowflake data types.

In this release, Snowflake provides a new, optional argument to disable this conversion:

PARSE_XML( '<string_containing_xml>' [ , <disable_auto_convert> ] )
CHECK_XML( '<string_containing_xml>' [ , <disable_auto_convert> ] )

If you do not want the function to perform this conversion, pass TRUE as the second argument. For example:

SELECT PARSE_XML('<test>22257e111</test>', TRUE);

For more information, see the documentation on PARSE_XML and CHECK_XML.

Tasks: Manual Execution of Runs — General Availability¶

With this release, we are pleased to announce the general availability of the EXECUTE TASK SQL command. This command enables task operators or owners to manually execute a single run of a scheduled task (i.e. a standalone task or root task in a task tree). Executing a run of a root task triggers a cascading run of child tasks in the tree, as though the root task had run on its defined schedule. Previously, a scheduled task could only start when its next scheduled run occurred.

The EXECUTE TASK command is useful for testing new or modified standalone tasks before you allow them into a production schedule. Call this SQL command in scripts or stored procedures, or execute the command using third-party tools or services to integrate tasks in external data pipelines.

Tasks: Error Notifications for Snowflake Accounts on Amazon Web Services — General Availability¶

With this release, we are pleased to announce the general availability of error notifications for tasks. When tasks encounter errors while during a run, this feature triggers a notification that describes the errors using cloud messaging, enabling further analysis of the SQL code in the task definition.

Database Replication: Streams and Tasks Support — Preview¶

With this release, Database Replication and Failover/Failback now includes preview support for the replication of stream and task objects. For more information, see Replication and streams and Replication and tasks.

Column Lineage in Access History — Preview¶

With this release, Snowflake is pleased to announce column lineage in preview. Column lineage (i.e. Access History for columns) extends objects_modified column in the Account Usage ACCESS_HISTORY view to specify how data flows from the source column to the target column in a write operation. Snowflake tracks the data from the source columns through all subsequent table objects that reference data from the source columns (e.g. INSERT, MERGE, CTAS).

For details, see Access History and the ACCESS_HISTORY View.

Object Tagging: Support Added for Stored Procedures¶

With this release, Snowflake adds support to assign a tag to a stored procedure.

For details on syntax and usage, see Function Updates: SYSTEM$GET_TAG & TAG_REFERENCES (Information Schema): Support Added for Stored Procedures (in this topic).

Object Tagging: Increase Tag Quotas for Objects and Columns¶

With this release, Snowflake increases the number of tags that can be set on objects and columns as follows:

• 50 unique tags on objects that are not tables and views.

• For tables, views, and columns:

  • 50 unique tags on the table or view object itself.

  • 50 unique tags on all columns combined within a table or view.

  • A total of 100 tags on a table or view and all of its columns.

Note that a single CREATE <object> or ALTER <object> statement can specify up to 100 tags in a statement.

For details, see Tag quotas for objects and columns.

Tag-based Masking Policies — General Availability¶

With this release, Snowflake is pleased to announce the general availability of tag-based masking policies. A tag-based masking policy combines the object tagging and masking policy features to allow a masking policy to be set on a tag using an ALTER TAG command. This feature was announced in preview in June 2022.

For details, see Tag-based masking policies.

Larger Warehouses — General Availability¶

With this release, we are pleased to announce the general availability of larger (5X-LARGE and 6X-LARGE) warehouses in Amazon Web Services (AWS) regions.

Before provisioning a 5X-LARGE or 6X-LARGE warehouse, please contact Snowflake Support.

For more information, see Overview of warehouses.