Overview of Key Features

This topic lists the notable/significant features supported in the current release. Note that it does not list every feature provided by Snowflake.

Security, Governance, and Data Protection

Standard and Extended SQL Support

Tools and Interfaces

Apps and Extensibility

Connectivity

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 securely sharing data with other Snowflake accounts:

    • Provide data to other accounts to consume.

    • Consume data provided by other accounts.

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.