Overview of key features¶

This topic lists the notable and significant features supported in the current release. It doesn’t list every feature provided by Snowflake.

Security, governance, and data protection¶

• Choose the geographical location where your data is stored, based on your region.

• User authentication through standard user/password credentials.

• Enhanced authentication:

  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA).
  • Federated authentication and single sign-on (SSO).
  • Snowflake OAuth.
  • External OAuth.
  • Key-pair authentication.
  • Authentication through programmatic access tokens.

• All communication between clients, including all Snowflake connectors and drivers, and the server is protected through TLS.

• Deployment inside a cloud platform VPC (AWS or GCP) or VNet (Azure).

• Isolation of data (for loading and unloading) using:

  • Amazon S3 policy controls.
  • Azure storage access controls.
  • Google Cloud Storage access permissions.

• Support for PHI data (in compliance with HIPAA and HITRUST CSF regulations) — requires Business Critical Edition (or higher).

• Automatic data encryption by Snowflake using Snowflake-managed keys.

• Object-level access control.

• Snowflake Time Travel (1 day standard for all accounts; additional days, up to 90, allowed with Snowflake Enterprise) for:

  • Querying historical data in tables.
  • Restoring and cloning historical data in databases, schemas, and tables.

• Snowflake Fail-safe (7 days standard for all accounts) for disaster recovery of historical data.

• Column-level Security to apply masking policies to columns in tables or views — requires Enterprise Edition (or higher).

• Row-level Security to apply row access policies to tables and views — requires Enterprise Edition (or higher).

• Introduction to object tagging to apply tags to Snowflake objects to facilitate tracking sensitive data and resource usage — requires Enterprise Edition (or higher).

• Differential privacy to protect data against targeted privacy attacks. — requires Enterprise Edition (or higher).

Standard and extended SQL support¶

• Most DDL defined in SQL:1999, including:

  • Databases, schemas, tables, and related objects.
  • Core data types.
  • SET operations.
  • CAST functions.

• Standard DML such as UPDATE, DELETE, and INSERT, as well as more advanced DML:

  • Multi-table INSERT, MERGE, and multi-merge.
  • DML for bulk data loading/unloading.

• Iceberg tables.

• Transactions.

• Temporary and transient tables for transitory data.

• Lateral views.

• Materialized views.

• Statistical aggregate functions.

• Analytical aggregates (Group by cube, rollup, and grouping sets).

• Parts of the SQL:2003 analytic extensions:

  • Window functions.
  • Grouping sets.

• Scalar and tabular user-defined functions (UDFs), with support for Java, JavaScript, Python, Scala, and SQL.

• Stored procedures and procedural language support (Snowflake Scripting)

• Snowflake Information Schema for querying object and account metadata, as well as query and warehouse usage history data.

• Recursive queries, including:

  • CONNECT BY.
  • Recursive CTE (common table expressions).

• Collation support.

• Geospatial data support.

• User-defined types support.

Tools and interfaces¶

• Snowsight for account and general management, monitoring of resources and system usage, and querying data.
• Snowflake CLI (open source command-line client).
• SnowSQL (Python-based command line client).
• Virtual warehouse management from the GUI or command line, including creating, resizing (with zero downtime), suspending, and dropping warehouses.
• Snowflake Extension for Visual Studio Code - Detailed instructions for installing, configuring and using the Snowflake Extension for Visual Studio Code.

Apps and extensibility¶

• APIs for Java, Python, and Scala with which you can build applications that process data in Snowflake without moving data to the system where your application code runs.

• A framework for creating applications to share data content and application logic with other Snowflake accounts.

• A RESTful API for accessing and updating data.

• Support for running Streamlit apps natively in Snowflake to create and share custom web apps for machine learning and data science.

• Support for developing procedures and user-defined functions (UDFs) with a handler in one of several programming languages.

• Extensive set of client connectors and drivers provided by Snowflake:

  • Python connector
  • Spark connector
  • Node.js driver
  • Go Snowflake driver
  • .NET driver
  • JDBC client driver
  • ODBC client driver
  • PHP PDO driver

• Snowpark Container Services is a fully managed container offering that helps you easily deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications.

Connectivity¶

• Broad ecosystem of supported 3rd-party partners and technologies.
• Support for using free trials to connect to selected partners.

Data import and export¶

• Support for bulk loading and unloading data into/out of tables, including:

  • Load any data that uses a supported character encoding.
  • Load data from compressed files.
  • Load most flat, delimited data files (CSV, TSV, etc.).
  • Load data files in JSON, Avro, ORC, Parquet, and XML format.
  • Load from files in cloud storage or local files using the Snowflake web interface or command-line client.

• Support for continuous data loading from files:

  • Use Snowpipe to load data in micro-batches from internal (i.e. Snowflake) stages or external (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure) stages.

• Support for accessing data in S3-compatible storage.

Data sharing¶

• Support for both sharing data in secured objects and sharing data in non-secure views with other Snowflake accounts:

  • Provide data to other accounts to consume.
  • Consume data provided by other accounts.

• Support for collaborators using Snowflake Data Clean Rooms to share data in a privacy-preserving environment.

Replication and failover¶

• Support for replication and failover across multiple Snowflake accounts in different regions and cloud platforms:
  • Replicate objects between Snowflake accounts (within the same organization) and keep the objects and stored data synchronized.
  • Configure failover to one or more Snowflake accounts for business continuity and disaster recovery.