April 22-24, 2024 — 8.16 Release Notes¶

Attention

The release has completed.

For differences between the in-advance and final versions of these release notes, see Release notes change log.

SQL updates¶

New SQL command(s)¶

The following commands(s) are now available with this release:

Command Category	New Command	Description
Organization DDL	SHOW ACCOUNTS	Lists all accounts in an organization, with the exclusion of managed accounts. Currently duplicates the functionality of SHOW ORGANIZATION ACCOUNTS. In a future release, the purpose and output of SHOW ORGANIZATION ACCOUNTS will change.

Command Category

New Command

Description

Organization DDL

SHOW ACCOUNTS

Lists all accounts in an organization, with the exclusion of managed accounts.

Currently duplicates the functionality of SHOW ORGANIZATION ACCOUNTS. In a future release, the purpose and output of SHOW ORGANIZATION ACCOUNTS will change.

SQL API support for hybrid tables¶

With this release, Snowflake is pleased to announce support for the Snowflake SQL API when queries and other operations access data in hybrid tables. The SQL API is a REST API that you can use to access and update data in a Snowflake database.

Extensibility updates¶

Asynchronous job support in Snowpark stored procedures¶

With this release, Snowflake is pleased to announce support for running concurrent asynchronous child jobs using Snowpark APIs within stored procedure handler code written in Java, Python, or Scala. You can run an asynchronous query, as well as access its status and result, or cancel the query.

Data Lake Updates¶

Iceberg tables: Support for un-materialized identity partition columns¶

With this release, Snowflake is pleased to announce that you can create an Iceberg table from an Iceberg data source that contains un-materialized identity partition columns.

An un-materialized identity partition column is created when a table defines an identity transform using a source column that doesn’t exist in a Parquet file.

Before release 8.16, this scenario was not supported.

For more information, see Iceberg tables.

Release notes change log¶

Announcement	Update	Date
Release notes	Initial publication (preview)	22-Apr-24
Asynchronous job support in Snowpark stored procedures	Added to Extensibility updates section	23-Apr-24
Support for granting the WRITE privilege on external stages	Removed from Data loading / unloading updates section (and section removed) because this update was announced in the previous release	23-Apr-24
Iceberg tables: Support for un-materialized identity partition columns	Added to Data Lake Updates	26-Apr-24