Object Identifiers

An identifier is a string of characters (up to 255 characters in length) used to identify first-class Snowflake “named” objects, including table columns:

  • Identifiers are specified at object creation time and then are referenced in queries and DDL/DML statements.

  • Identifiers can also be defined in queries as aliases (e.g. SELECT a+b AS "the sum";).

Object identifiers, often simply referred to as object names, must be unique within the context of the object type and the “parent” object:

Account

Identifiers for account objects (users, roles, warehouses, databases, etc.) must be unique across the entire account.

Databases

Identifiers for schemas must be unique within the database. To enable resolving schemas that have the same identifiers across databases, Snowflake supports fully-qualifying the schema identifiers in the form of:

<database_name>.<schema_name>

Schemas

Identifiers for schema objects (tables, views, file formats, stages, etc.) must be unique within the schema. To enable resolving objects that have the same identifiers in different databases/schemas, Snowflake supports fully-qualifying the object identifiers in the form of:

<database_name>.<schema_name>.<object_name>

Tables

Identifiers for columns must be unique within the table.

Note

UDFs and stored procedures are schema objects; however Snowflake supports UDFs/stored procedures with the same identifier within the same schema (also referred to as “overloading”). For more details, see Naming and overloading procedures and UDFs.

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