Sep 03, 2026: External lineage (General availability)

External lineage is now generally available and is no longer in Preview.

External lineage extends Snowflake’s native lineage to include data sources and destinations outside Snowflake, giving you visibility into data flows across your entire data ecosystem. It uses the OpenLineage standard: tools such as dbt and Apache Airflow send OpenLineage events to a Snowflake REST endpoint, and Snowflake incorporates them into the lineage it already tracks.

With external lineage, you can do the following:

  • Send COMPLETE OpenLineage events to the /api/v2/lineage/external-lineage endpoint to establish lineage, either from a data tool with an OpenLineage integration or by sending the request yourself. See Configure your data tool.
  • Capture lineage between two objects outside Snowflake, so a pipeline that moves data through several external systems appears as a connected chain even where no Snowflake object sits between them.
  • Capture lineage between individual columns using the columnLineage facet, in addition to lineage between objects. See Payload requirements.
  • View external objects in the lineage graph in Snowsight, where they’re labeled as external nodes.
  • Query external lineage with SQL. External objects appear in the output of GET_LINEAGE, and you can retrieve the lineage of an external object by anchoring the query on it. See Lineage for objects outside Snowflake.
  • Remove lineage with a DELETE request to the same endpoint. See Send requests to remove lineage.

External lineage requires Enterprise Edition (or higher). Sending lineage requires the INGEST LINEAGE privilege on the account, and removing lineage requires the DELETE LINEAGE privilege. See Grant Snowflake privileges.

For more information, see External lineage.