Creating an S3 Stage¶
An external (i.e. S3) stage specifies where data files are stored so that the data in the files can be loaded into a table.
Data can be loaded directly from files in a specified S3 bucket, with or without a folder path (or prefix, in S3 terminology). If the path ends with /, all of the objects in the corresponding S3 folder are loaded.
Note
In the previous step, if you followed the instructions to configure an AWS IAM role with the required policies and permissions to access your external S3 bucket, you have already created an S3 stage. You can skip this step and continue to Copying Data from an S3 Stage.
In this Topic:
External Stages¶
In addition to loading directly from files in S3 buckets, Snowflake supports creating named external stages, which encapsulate all of the required information for staging files, including:
The S3 bucket where the files are staged.
The named storage integration object or S3 credentials for the bucket (if it is protected).
An encryption key (if the files in the bucket have been encrypted).
Named external stages are optional, but recommended when you plan to load data regularly from the same location.
Creating an External Stage¶
You can create a named stage using either the web interface or SQL:
Classic Web Interface: Click on Databases
» <db_name> » Stages
- SQL
Example¶
The following example uses SQL to create an external stage named my_s3_stage that references a private/protected S3 bucket
named mybucket with a folder path named encrypted_files/. The CREATE statement includes the s3_int storage integration
that was created in Option 1: Configuring a Snowflake Storage Integration to Access Amazon S3 to access the S3 bucket. The stage references a named file
format object named my_csv_format, which describes the data in the files stored in the bucket path:
CREATE STAGE my_s3_stage STORAGE_INTEGRATION = s3_int URL = 's3://mybucket/encrypted_files/' FILE_FORMAT = my_csv_format;
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.