Open Data Sharing (Preview)¶

Open Data Sharing in Snowflake expands traditional data sharing beyond the Snowflake ecosystem. This capability allows you to securely share live, read-only data assets with consumers who do not use Snowflake, eliminating the need for complex ETL pipelines, data duplication, or manual file exports.

Why use Open Data Sharing?¶

• Universal access: Consumers query live data using standard, open-source Iceberg REST Catalog APIs from any analytical tool or platform where this protocol is supported.

• Zero data movement: Data remains securely in your Snowflake storage layer, ensuring a single source of truth while removing data egress costs and storage duplication.

• Granular control: Secure data distribution using restricted external consumer identities and region-specific Programmatic Access Tokens (PATs) that you manage directly.

• Automated replication: The underlying framework handles cross-region replication seamlessly based on your listing configuration, placing data closer to your external consumers for optimal performance.

Secure data sharing with external consumers¶

The following steps walk through a minimal Open Data Sharing workflow: create an external consumer and access token, prepare shared Iceberg table data, create a share and listing, and retrieve the catalog URL for the external consumer.

Determine your account region¶

During Private Preview, shared data is available only in the region where your provider account is located.

Run the following command to return your account region:

SELECT CURRENT_REGION();

The result is the Snowflake region ID for your account (for example, AWS_US_WEST_2 or PUBLIC.AWS_US_WEST_2).

You can also identify your region from your account URL. If your URL includes a cloud region ID, such as us-east-2 in organization-account.us-east-2.aws.snowflakecomputing.com, your account is hosted in that cloud region. For more information, see Account identifiers.

Step 1: Use a role with the required privileges¶

Use a role that can create external consumers, shares, listings, and the database objects you plan to share. The following example uses ACCOUNTADMIN:

USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;

Step 2: Create an external consumer¶

Create an external consumer for the party that will access your shared data outside Snowflake.

CREATE EXTERNAL CONSUMER test_ext_consumer;

SHOW EXTERNAL CONSUMERS LIKE '%test_ext_consumer%';

External consumers are restricted users bound to a specific region at creation time. You cannot grant roles or other standard user options to these accounts.

Step 3: Add a programmatic access token¶

Add a Programmatic Access Token (PAT) for the external consumer.

ALTER EXTERNAL CONSUMER test_ext_consumer ADD PAT test_ext_consumer_pat;

Step 4: Create shared data¶

Create a database, schema, and Iceberg table for the data you want to share. The following example uses Snowflake-managed storage for the simplest demo setup:

CREATE DATABASE test_db;
CREATE SCHEMA test_db.test_schema;

CREATE ICEBERG TABLE test_db.test_schema.test_table (id INT, val STRING)
  EXTERNAL_VOLUME = 'SNOWFLAKE_MANAGED'
  CATALOG = 'SNOWFLAKE';

INSERT INTO test_db.test_schema.test_table VALUES (1, 'A'), (2, 'B'), (3, 'C');

SELECT * FROM test_db.test_schema.test_table;

Share data from an external volume (optional)¶

If you do not use Snowflake-managed storage, you can create an Iceberg table that references an external volume instead. You can skip this section if you used the Snowflake-managed table above.

First, create an external volume:

CREATE OR REPLACE EXTERNAL VOLUME exvol
  STORAGE_LOCATIONS = (
    (
      NAME = 'exvol'
      STORAGE_PROVIDER = 'S3'
      STORAGE_BASE_URL = 's3://bucket/basepath'
      STORAGE_AWS_ROLE_ARN = ''
    )
  );

Then create an Iceberg table that uses the external volume:

CREATE ICEBERG TABLE test_db.test_schema.test_table_ex_vol (id INT, val STRING)
  EXTERNAL_VOLUME = exvol
  CATALOG = 'SNOWFLAKE';

Step 5: Create a share and grant privileges¶

Create a share and grant the required privileges on the database, schema, and table.

CREATE SHARE test_share;

GRANT USAGE ON DATABASE test_db TO SHARE test_share;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA test_db.test_schema TO SHARE test_share;
GRANT SELECT ON TABLE test_db.test_schema.test_table TO SHARE test_share;

Step 6: Create an external listing¶

Create an external listing that attaches the share to the external consumer.

CREATE EXTERNAL LISTING test_listing SHARE test_share AS
$$
title: "test open sharing"
description: "test open sharing"
listing_terms:
  type: "OFFLINE"
external_targets:
  access:
    - external_consumers: [TEST_EXT_CONSUMER]
$$;

For more information about listing manifest fields, see Listing manifest reference.

Step 7: Verify the listing¶

Confirm that the listing was created and review its properties.

SHOW LISTINGS LIKE 'TEST_LISTING';

DESC LISTING test_listing;

Step 8: Get the catalog URL for the external consumer¶

Call SYSTEM$GET_LISTING_URL_FOR_EXTERNAL_CONSUMER to retrieve the catalog and catalog_uri values for the external consumer.

CALL SYSTEM$GET_LISTING_URL_FOR_EXTERNAL_CONSUMER('TEST_LISTING');

Provide the returned catalog URL and the PAT from Step 3 to the external consumer so they can connect with an Iceberg REST Catalog client.

Listing manifest properties¶

The example listing uses the following manifest fields:

title and description

Identify the listing for providers and external consumers.

listing_terms

Specifies how consumers accept terms for the listing. The example uses OFFLINE.

external_targets.access.external_consumers

Lists the external consumer identities that can access the listing.