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

Snowflake’s features

With its revolutionary cloud architecture, Snowflake continues to innovate and (pleasantly) surprise its users with game-changing performance enhancements beyond those that made it famous from its inception. While this is by no means a comprehensive list, the following sections highlight some of the most exciting and relevant features when it comes to data modeling.

Zero-copy cloning

Zero-copy cloning allows Snowflake users to clone data without physically duplicating it. Not having to move data means cloning happens instantly—whether cloning a table or an entire database. Cloned objects are virtual copies of their source, so they do not incur storage costs. Once data changes occur in the clone or its source, the clone becomes a physical object and begins consuming storage resources.

Cloning is an ideal way to create system backups and testing environments—achieving in seconds what used to take days. At the object level, cloning is...