Snowflake is an analytic data warehouse provided as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The Snowflake data warehouse uses an SQL database engine with a unique architecture designed for cloud services.
Snowflake tags
In Snowflake, you can assign a tag to a database object. When a tag is assigned to an object, the tag is assigned a string value. Snowflake stores the tag and its string value as a key-value pair. For example, cost_center = 'sales'. When you run the metadata extraction task for a Snowflake catalog source, the catalog source job extracts Snowflake tags by default. In Data Governance and Catalog, you can view Snowflake tags for data elements and entities in a catalog source and also search assets by Snowflake tags.
For more information about Snowflake tags, see the Snowflake documentation.
Objects extracted
The metadata extraction service extracts the following objects from a Snowflake source system:
•Database
•Schema
•Tables
•Tags
•View
•Materialized View
Note: Objects of the Materialized View type appear as View in Data Governance and Catalog.
•Function
•Stored Procedure
•Pipe
•Stage
•Column
You can extract metadata from stored procedures that use the following languages:
•JavaScript
•Snowflake SQL scripting
•Snowpark Python
Note: Effective in the 2024.11.S release, extracting metadata from stored procedures that use Snowpark Python is available for preview.
Preview functionality is supported for evaluation purposes but is unwarranted and is not supported in production environments or any environment that you plan to push to production. Informatica intends to include the preview functionality in an upcoming release for production use, but might choose not to in accordance with changing market or technical circumstances. For more information, contact Informatica Global Customer Support.
Secure Data Sharing in Snowflake allows you to share selected database assets with other Snowflake accounts without copying or transferring any actual data. To share data, providers create a share of their database, select specific objects to include, and then add consumer accounts to this share.
You can extract metadata from the following database assets shared through Snowflake Secure Data Sharing:
•Database
•Table
•External table
•Secure view
•Secure materialized view
To view the complete data lineage and all the metadata extracted for the consumer account, including shared assets, perform a connection assignment between catalog sources created for the provider and consumer Snowflake accounts.
Data profiling for Snowflake objects
Configure data profiling to run profiles on the metadata extracted from a Snowflake source system. You can run data profiles on the following Snowflake objects:
•Table
•View
You can view the profiling statistics in Data Governance and Catalog. The data profiling task runs profiles on the following data types for Snowflake objects:
•NUMBER
•FLOAT
•DOUBLE
•VARCHAR
•BOOLEAN
•DATE
•TIME
•TIMESTAMP_LTZ
•TIMESTAMP_NTZ
•TIMESTAMP_TZ
•OBJECT
•ARRAY
•VARIANT
Sampling type
Determine the sample rows on which you want to run the data profiling task. You can choose one of the following sampling types for a Snowflake catalog source:
- All Rows
- Limit N Rows
- Custom Query
Data classification for Snowflake objects
You can run the data classification capability on Snowflake catalog sources to identify and organize data into relevant categories. For more information about data classification, see the Administration help.
Data lineage
The following lineage data is available for Snowflake assets:
•From table to view
•Stored Procedures linked to tables or views
•Functions linked to tables or views
•Procedure calling a procedure
•Procedure calling a function
•Pipe linked to stages
•Pipe linked to table or views
For more information about data lineage, see Data Lineage in the Working With Assets help.