Book Image

Data Modeling with Snowflake

By : Serge Gershkovich
5 (2)
Book Image

Data Modeling with Snowflake

5 (2)
By: Serge Gershkovich

Overview of this book

The Snowflake Data Cloud is one of the fastest-growing platforms for data warehousing and application workloads. Snowflake's scalable, cloud-native architecture and expansive set of features and objects enables you to deliver data solutions quicker than ever before. Yet, we must ensure that these solutions are developed using recommended design patterns and accompanied by documentation that’s easily accessible to everyone in the organization. This book will help you get familiar with simple and practical data modeling frameworks that accelerate agile design and evolve with the project from concept to code. These universal principles have helped guide database design for decades, and this book pairs them with unique Snowflake-native objects and examples like never before – giving you a two-for-one crash course in theory as well as direct application. By the end of this Snowflake book, you’ll have learned how to leverage Snowflake’s innovative features, such as time travel, zero-copy cloning, and change-data-capture, to create cost-effective, efficient designs through time-tested modeling principles that are easily digestible when coupled with real-world examples.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: Core Concepts in Data Modeling and Snowflake Architecture
8
Part 2: Applied Modeling from Idea to Deployment
14
Part 3: Solving Real-World Problems with Transformational Modeling

Summary

Data Vault 2.0 is designed to address the challenges of managing large, complex, and rapidly changing data environments. It is a hybrid approach that combines elements of 3NF and star schema and uses a standardized, repeatable design pattern that can be applied to any dataset, regardless of size or complexity.

Data Vault design begins by defining the business model and constructing the base layer, known as the Raw Vault. The Raw Vault contains the following elements:

  • Hubs – natural keys that identify business entities
  • Links – store the interactions between business entities
  • Satellites – store the descriptions and attributes of business entities
  • Reference tables – include descriptive information and metadata

On top of the Raw Vault, a Business Vault is constructed to meet changing business needs and requirements without disrupting the overall data architecture. Next, domain-oriented information marts are built to meet...