SQLAlchemy release notes for 2026¶

See Using the Snowflake SQLAlchemy toolkit with the Python Connector for documentation.

Version 1.10.0 (May 20, 2026)¶

New features and updates¶

• Added Google Cloud Storage (GCS) bucket support for the CopyIntoStorage expression.
• Added SnowflakeBase, snowflake_declarative_base(), and SnowflakeSession to enable efficient bulk inserts for ORM models with nullable optional columns. Using SnowflakeBase (or snowflake_declarative_base()) along with SnowflakeSession batches all objects into a single executemany INSERT, instead of producing one INSERT statement per distinct set of non-None column keys.
• Added the case_sensitive_identifiers opt-in engine flag (constructor keyword argument or ?case_sensitive_identifiers=True URL parameter) that governs case-sensitive identifier handling. The default value is False, so existing applications aren’t affected unless they explicitly opt in. When you opt in:
  • All-uppercase reserved-word identifiers (for example, TABLE) are normalized to quoted_name("table", True) to prevent key-lookup mismatches between creation and reflection.
  • Mixed-case reflected identifiers (for example, MyCol from a quoted Snowflake column) are returned as quoted_name("MyCol", True) instead of a plain str.
  • Schema strings with inner double quotes (for example, '"myschema"' or '"mydb"."myschema"') have their extracted parts marked quote=True, preserving case sensitivity in emitted SQL.
• Added the create_snowflake_engine(url, schema=..., case_sensitive_schema=True) helper. The helper URL-encodes case-sensitive schema names using %22 so the Snowflake connector receives the literal double-quoted form. Schema names are now always URL-encoded regardless of case_sensitive_schema, preventing special characters (?, #, /) from being misinterpreted as URL delimiters.
• Added snowflake.sqlalchemy.alembic_util.render_item, a drop-in Alembic render_item hook for env.py that serializes quoted_name columns with quote=True correctly in generated migration files, preventing Alembic autogenerate from silently converting case-sensitive column names to uppercase.
• Added support for cross-database schema reflection using schema='database.schema' notation, so you can reflect and join tables from different databases in a single session without using raw SQL.
• Added composite key ordering.
• Added a SnowflakeWarning that’s emitted at DDL compile time when Identity() is used on a primary key column. The warning alerts you that ORM flush operations will raise a FlushError. Use Sequence() instead. The warning is emitted once per unique (table, column) pair per Python process.
• Mapped the Snowflake UUID column type to sqlalchemy.sql.sqltypes.UUID for reflection on SQLAlchemy 2.x. The column was previously reflected as NullType. Values are returned as plain strings (as_uuid=False) rather than uuid.UUID instances. There’s no change on SQLAlchemy 1.4, where the generic UUID type doesn’t exist.
• Optimized reflection performance:
  • Added get_multi_columns, get_multi_pk_constraint, get_multi_unique_constraints, and get_multi_foreign_keys for SQLAlchemy 2.x bulk reflection. Each method issues one schema-wide query per reflection pass instead of one query per table.
  • On SQLAlchemy 2.x, get_pk_constraint, get_unique_constraints, get_foreign_keys, and get_indexes now automatically use per-table SHOW … IN TABLE queries without any opt-in flag. These methods previously always issued SHOW … IN SCHEMA, even for single-table Inspector calls, which caused approximately 20-second delays on schemas with thousands of tables.
  • The cache_column_metadata=True opt-in now enables per-table SHOW … IN TABLE queries for get_pk_constraint, get_unique_constraints, get_foreign_keys, and get_indexes on SQLAlchemy 1.4.
  • SQLAlchemy 2.x get_columns now uses DESC TABLE directly so that temporary tables and dynamic tables are reflected correctly.

Bug fixes¶

• Fixed with_loader_criteria silently dropping filters on non-Snowflake dialects. Importing snowflake-sqlalchemy previously altered SQLAlchemy’s ORM compilation for every dialect in the process, causing loader-criteria filters to be omitted inside sealed subqueries when using PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and others. Snowflake dialect behavior is unchanged; the BCR-1057 lateral-join workaround is now scoped to Snowflake connections only.
• Scoped referred_schema=None normalization in foreign key reflection to the default schema only. When reflecting the default schema, same-schema foreign keys (default to default) keep the established SQLAlchemy convention of referred_schema=None. When reflecting a non-default schema, every foreign key keeps its actual referred_schema. This change prevents Alembic autogenerate mismatches that previously occurred for cross-schema foreign keys that targeted the default schema.
• Fixed case-sensitive identifier handling:
  • _split_schema_by_dot now correctly parses SQL-escaped double quotes ("") inside quoted schema and database identifiers (for example, "my""schema" becomes my"schema), preventing silent truncation of identifiers containing literal quote characters.
  • denormalize_column_name now correctly double-quotes quoted_name("mycol", True) columns in CLUSTER BY clauses, instead of silently dropping the case-sensitivity signal.
  • _has_object (used by has_table and has_sequence) now applies denormalize_name to both the schema and object name before building the DESC SQL, making it consistent with all other reflection methods.
  • create_connect_args now atomically replaces the name_utils instance when the URL’s case_sensitive_identifiers value differs from the current dialect state, so concurrent readers on other threads never observe a torn update.
• Restored backward-compatible SQL generation for true division (/) when div_is_floordiv=True. The Snowflake compiler now correctly delegates to the SQLAlchemy base implementation, emitting CAST(col AS NUMERIC) for integer operands as it did before.
• Fixed foreign key referred_schema resolution so reflected foreign keys keep their actual schema unless the target is in the connection’s default schema. Foreign keys whose target shared the reflected non-default schema were previously reported with referred_schema=None, which caused SQLAlchemy’s _reflect_fk to autoload from the wrong schema and raise NoReferencedColumnError during Alembic autogenerate.
• Replaced SHOW TABLES LIKE with SHOW INDEXES IN TABLE for single-table index reflection, eliminating SQL LIKE wildcard false positives and case-sensitivity bugs.

Version 1.9.0 (March 04, 2026)¶

New features and updates¶

• Added support for DECFLOAT and VECTOR data types.
• Added support for server_version_info support.
• Added support for ILIKE in queries.
• Introduced a shared helper for fully-qualified schema name resolution, replacing inconsistent ad-hoc patterns across reflection methods.
• Refactored column reflection internals into dedicated helpers to reduce complexity without changing behavior.
• Added pytest-xdist parallel test support via per-worker schema provisioning hooks.
• Bumped pandas lower bound in the sa14 test environment from <2.1 to >=2.1.1,<2.2 to ensure pre-built wheels are available for Python 3.12.
• Added support for timezone in timestamp and datetime types.

Bug fixes¶

• Fixed SYSDATE() rendering.
• Fixed and improved schema reflection.
• Fixed a crash issue when reflecting without specifying a schema, caused by None arguments in internal schema resolution.
• Fixed a crash issue when SHOW TABLES returns empty string table names, causing IndexError during reflection.
• Fixed incomplete identity column reflection metadata. This column now includes all fields required by SQLAlchemy 2.0+ (always, cycle, order, and so on).
• Fixed SQLAlchemy version parsing.