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

As we have seen throughout this chapter, modeling is a process used to agree, plan, and develop a database design and a means to navigate and explore it to gain greater insight into the underlying business context. Every new project must pass through the four modeling stages, whether formally recognized or not. But even for existing databases that have not been adequately documented, reverse engineering is an effective mechanism to work backward from a database to uncover its business meaning.

The design journey starts with conceptual modeling—a collaborative process that involves business and data teams working together to understand the core elements that underpin business operations and how they interact. Conceptual models favor simplicity over detail—making them accessible to team members of all backgrounds and helping steer conversations to converge at a shared understanding of the business model.

After conceptual modeling, the data team can add further...