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

An Introduction to the Four Modeling Types

The previous chapter introduced the concept of a model as a selective simplification of reality. Like Harry Beck’s Tube map, designed expressly to navigate London’s subway system, other map variants—such as street and topographical—exist to describe different aspects of geography. The same applies to databases and the organizations that rely on them to enable their business operations and analytics.

Many people think of modeling as simply documenting a database—diagramming. But modeling goes way beyond tables and databases by not only helping the developers understand the business but also helping the business understand itself.

Organizations use different models and modeling styles from org charts to network diagrams to navigate their many complexities. None of these provide a perfect map, but some serve as the right map for the right job. This chapter will explore the modeling types used to map and...