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

Costs to consider

Unlike on-premises databases, which are purchased upfront and used for the duration of their life cycle, Snowflake employs a consumption-based model known as variable spend (commonly referred to as pay-as-you-go). Variable spend enables teams to do rapid prototyping or experiment with proofs of concept without any upfront investment and to control their costs by monitoring and adjusting usage patterns. Here, we will break down the types of costs associated with using the Snowflake platform so that we can make informed design decisions later on.

Let us begin with the cost of storing data in the cloud.

Storage costs

Snowflake bills its customers based on the daily average of the data stored in the platform. Since Snowflake’s services layer automatically compresses data for optimal storage, customers enjoy lower storage costs without sacrificing performance. However, it is not just the raw data that counts toward storage quotas. Time Travel and fail-safe...