Data sharing and collaboration in Snowflake¶

Why share data with Snowflake¶

When you use Snowflake to share data as a provider, you can manage who has access to your data, and avoid challenges keeping your data synchronized across different people and groups.

As a data consumer, you can reduce the data transformations you need to perform because the data stays in Snowflake, making it easy to join datasets shared with you with your own data.

If you share your data using listings, you can include metadata with your data share, such as a title and description, and usage examples to help consumers use the data quickly. In addition to the benefits for consumers, as a provider you get access to usage data, automatically replicate your data to other regions, and can even decide to charge for access to your data or offer some datasets publicly on the Snowflake Marketplace.

Options for sharing¶

Listings let you share data with people in any Snowflake region, across clouds, without performing manual replication tasks. If you use listings, you can provide additional metadata for the data that you share, view customer data usage, and for listings offered publicly on the Snowflake Marketplace, gauge consumer interest in your listings.

If you don’t want to share data using a listing, you can use a direct share instead, see Secure data sharing and Non-secure data sharing. No matter which option you choose, you can share with people who don’t have Snowflake accounts by using Reader Accounts.

If you want to manage a group of accounts, and control who can publish and consume listings in that group, consider using a Data Exchange.

Listing¶

You can offer a listing privately to specific accounts, or publicly on the Snowflake Marketplace. For more about the Snowflake Marketplace, see About Snowflake Marketplace.

After you accept the provider and consumer terms, you can start sharing and consuming data shared with you with a listing. For more information, see About listings.

Direct share¶

Use a direct share to share data with one or more accounts in the same Snowflake region. You don’t need to copy or move data shared with a direct share.

If you want to convert a direct share with active consumers to a listing, see Convert a direct share to a listing.

For more information, see Share secure database objects.

Data Exchange¶

If creating listings that you offer privately to specific accounts isn’t an option, you can use a data exchange to share data with a selected group of accounts that you invite.

You must request that a data exchange be provisioned and configured for your account, then you can invite members to the exchange and specify whether they can consume data, provide data, or both.

For more information, see About Data Exchange.

Collaborating with shared data in a secure environment¶

When you use listings, direct shares, and Data Exchange to share data with another party, they can directly access the data. If you want to share data with other parties, but want to control how that data is accessed, you can use a Snowflake Data Clean Room to collaborate. The provider who is sharing their data in a clean room defines what analyses can be run against the shared data, which allows the consumer to gather insights from the data without having unrestricted access to it.

For more information, see About Snowflake Data Clean Rooms.