Creating an Azure Stage¶
A stage specifies where data files are stored (i.e. “staged”) so that the data in the files can be loaded into a table.
In this Topic:
Data can be loaded directly from files in a specified Azure container or in an Azure “folder” path (i.e. key value prefix). If the path ends with /, all of the objects in the corresponding Azure folder are loaded.
External Stages¶
In addition to loading directly from files in Azure containers, Snowflake supports creating named external stages, which encapsulate all of the required information for staging files, including:
The Azure container where the files are staged.
The named storage integration object or Azure credentials for the container (if it is protected).
An encryption key (if the files in the container have been encrypted).
Named external stages are optional, but recommended when you plan to load data regularly from the same location. For instructions for creating an external stage, See Creating a Stage below.
Creating a Stage¶
You can create a named stage using either the web interface or SQL:
- Classic Web Interface
Click on Databases
» <db_name> » Stages
- SQL
Creating an External Stage¶
The following example creates an external stage named my_azure_stage. The CREATE statement includes the azure_int storage
integration that was created in Configuring an Azure Container for Loading Data to access the Azure container container1 in the myaccount
account.
The data files are stored in the load/files/ path. The stage references a named file format object named my_csv_format, which
describes the data in the files stored in the path:
CREATE STAGE my_azure_stage
STORAGE_INTEGRATION = azure_int
URL = 'azure://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/load/files/'
FILE_FORMAT = my_csv_format;
Note
Use the blob.core.windows.net endpoint for all supported types of Azure blob storage accounts, including Data Lake Storage Gen2.
Note
By specifying a named file format object (or individual file format options) for the stage, it is not necessary to later specify the same file format options in the COPY command used to load data from the stage. For more information about file format objects and options, see CREATE FILE FORMAT.