About Workday Data Cloud and Snowflake¶

Snowflake and Workday have partnered to offer a zero-copy integration between Workday Data Cloud and Snowflake. The integration lets you query Workday Data Cloud tables directly from your existing Snowflake account, without ETL pipelines, data replication, or moving data out of Workday.

How it works¶

You create a Zerocopy Connector that authenticates to your Workday tenant using an API client that your Workday administrator registers for integrations. When the connector reaches CONNECTED state, you mount the Workday Data Cloud catalog as a catalog-linked database, which is a native Snowflake database object that exposes the Workday tables for querying without copying them.

Each Workday namespace becomes a schema in the catalog-linked database, and each Workday table becomes a table.

Data stays in Workday and Snowflake reads it in place, so there is no ETL and no duplication. Snowflake contacts Workday each time you run a SELECT against a mounted table, so every query returns fresh data rather than a cached copy. For the connector’s metadata refresh and catalog discovery intervals, see Refresh intervals.

Catalog-linked databases are read-only, and Workday remains the system of record.

Integration for existing Snowflake customers¶

The Workday Data Cloud zero-copy integration is designed for existing Snowflake customers who want to bring Workday data into their Snowflake account. You use your existing Snowflake account to set up the integration.

As a Snowflake account administrator, you create a Zerocopy Connector in your account and connect it with the credentials that your Workday administrator supplies. The connector authenticates outbound to your Workday tenant. After the connector is connected, you can mount the catalog and immediately query Workday tables in Snowflake.

Prerequisites¶

Before starting, ensure:

• You have an existing Snowflake account, and the account is enabled for the Workday connector. If the CREATE ZEROCOPY CONNECTOR command isn’t recognized, contact your Snowflake account team.
• Your Snowflake account is in a supported region. For details, see Supported Cloud Regions.
• Your Workday administrator has access to Workday Data Cloud and can register an API client for integrations. The API client supplies the tenant, host, and credential values that the connector needs. For the full list, see Set up the Workday Data Cloud Zerocopy Connector.

Set up the integration¶

Perform the following tasks in order to set up, configure, and run the Workday Data Cloud zero-copy integration.