SKUID + Snowflake

We have not done a lot of work with Snowflake. Skuid does not have built in OBDC or JDBC data source connectors. The only solutions I have seen have been by exposing the Snowflake data via a REST endpoint and using the Skuid REST data source to connect to that endpoint. That might take an intermediate third party product to most reliably create.

Would you mind sharing the use case you are trying to create? What sort of data are you accessing? How would it be represented in Skuid? What sort of interactivity are you expecting?

We have talked about building a Snowflake connector - but questions about the specific use cases have always been vague enough that we have not been able to set a clear technical objective.

PS - thanks for posting to the Skuid Community. The platform tells me this is your first time here. Please let us know if there is anything we can help you out with here…

Rob,
I actually used SKUID for three years at my previous org. Snowflake allows you to write stand SQL to access their data. When I connected to it via a DB ide like dbeaver it looks and acts just like a Postgres db. The use case is moving data out of salesforce into snowflake, they also have a huge data market place which we subscribe to. They have a nocopy technology meaning the shared database costs us no storage just I/O access it.

K. I’ve been seeing Snowflake quite a bit these past few weeks. What is it?

Pat,
I was going to try and explain it, but i thought, let me get chatgpt to do it for me: 🙂
Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing and analytics platform that allows organizations to store, process, and analyze large amounts of data. It’s a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, which means that it’s provided over the internet and hosted by Snowflake, rather than being installed on a company’s own servers.

With Snowflake, businesses can store and manage data from a variety of sources, such as databases, files, and streaming data. Snowflake provides tools for loading, transforming, and querying data, as well as for creating visualizations and reports.

One of the key benefits of Snowflake is its ability to scale easily and efficiently. Because Snowflake is built on a cloud-based infrastructure, it can automatically adjust its resources to handle changes in demand, without requiring manual intervention from IT staff. This makes it an ideal solution for businesses that need to process large amounts of data, but don’t want to invest in expensive hardware or software.

Snowflake also offers advanced security features, including encryption, access controls, and audit trails, which help businesses protect their data from unauthorized access and ensure compliance with data privacy regulations.

In summary, Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing and analytics platform that helps businesses store, process, and analyze large amounts of data. It’s a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that provides scalability, security, and flexibility for businesses of all sizes.

So it’s not an app for end users to do things in their company as part of their day?

I would say it’s a backend tool that powers front-end apps that users would utilize. Like any other database, most users do not work in the DB but in the application that accesses it.

What are it’s advantages over what everyone’s used to?

Rob, are there any updates regarding the connection between Skuid and Snowflake?
We would like to pull data collected by a third party app that is stored in Snowflake and present the info on a user dashboard. We use Allego for user training materials and would like to track which users have started the training, completed the training, etc.
I’ll admit that using data sources other than Salesforce is new to me, so any insights into the feasibility of pulling data from Snowflake would be greatly appreciated.

Jack, A Snowflake data source connector is currently in the research phase here. Unfortunately I can’t provide a specific timeline for availability in Skuid, but I can confirm you are not alone in being interested in this.

We have been able to do some POC’s using REST, however based on Snowflake’s recommendation and our research, we see value in a more direct integration that is more SQL based.

Thanks for the update, Mike.