John Summer

This article guides you through the process of installing SnowSQL on a Windows machine. We’ll cover everything from checking system requirements and downloading the installation package, to setting up your SnowSQL configuration file. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a working SnowSQL installation on your Windows computer. Let’s get started! A Quick Overview … Read more

The DISTINCT keyword in SQL lets you eliminate redundancy in your data queries and results. It’s particularly important in Snowflake where data can be enormous in size and highly redundant. Using DISTINCT in Snowflake can also optimize performance when dealing with large volumes of data in the cloud. It can help in: This article runs … Read more

PostgreSQL’s DISTINCT ON clause is a powerful tool for filtering result sets. However, the syntax is not available in Snowflake. Thankfully, there are several methods you can use to get the same results. This article walks you through three techniques that provide the equivalent of DISTINCT ON in Snowflake.  Each method combines the ROW_NUMBER() windows … Read more

Tables in Snowflake are the primary structure for storing and organizing data within a database. As in other SQL-based systems, a table consists of rows and columns. You’ve probably worked with tables in other SQL systems, but Snowflake has specific benefits and limitations you need to understand. This article covers everything you need to know … Read more

In some database systems, you explicitly choose when to partition tables. In Snowflake, table partitioning happens automatically behind the scenes using a concept called micro-partitions. Although you don’t need an in-depth understanding of micro-partitions, you do need to understand how they allow you to cluster your tables for better performance. This article quickly explains the … Read more

Some of Snowflake’s competitors offer a free tier through restricted, community, or developer editions. Snowflake doesn’t do so for reasons I discuss later in this article. Snowflake offers a free trial for 30 days or until you use up $400 of free credits. It’s possible to use sequential free trials to continue working on the … Read more

While Databricks and Snowflake may seem similar at first glance, the two cloud-based platforms have distinct features, capabilities, and primary use cases that set them apart. Databricks provides an analytics platform designed for massive-scale data engineering and collaborative data science. Snowflake is a managed service that offers a cloud-based data warehousing platform built for easy … Read more

Snowflake was founded in 2012 by three data warehousing experts: Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, and Marcin Zukowski. Benoit Dageville and Thierry Cruanes both worked for Oracle for many years. Marcin Zukowski had co-founded a Dutch database company and worked for Actian before joining the two Frenchmen to form Snowflake. Benoit Dageville Benoit Dageville is a … Read more