Snowflake Data Warehousing Platform

A Snowflake Data Warehousing Platform is a data warehousing platform produced by Snowflake Inc..

• Context:
  • It can (typically) be used to create Snowflake DB Instances.
  • It can make use of Micro-Partitions.
  • It can make use of a Columnar Data Store.
  • It can make use of SnowSQL (e.g. SnowSQL v1.2.0).
  • It can make use of a Snowflake ODBC Driver (Snowflake ODBC Driver v2.20.0).
  • …
• Example(s):
  • Snowflake v3.51 [1].
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • GCP's BigQuery.
  • AWS' Redshift.
  • Netezza.
  • …
• See: Tableau Platform.

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References

• https://docs.snowflake.net/manuals/release-notes.html

2021

• https://hevodata.com/learn/snowflake-vs-redshift-vs-bigquery/#conclusion
  • QUOTE: ... Data Warehousing architectures have rapidly changed over the years and most of the notable service providers are now Cloud-based. Therefore, companies are increasingly on the move to align with such offerings on the Cloud as it provides them with a lower upfront cost, enhances scalability, and performance as opposed to traditional On-premise Data Warehousing systems. The purpose of this guide is to compare and contrast the key differences between three of the leading Data Warehouse platforms available in the market today and help you understand the key factors that drive the Snowflake vs Redshift vs BigQuery decision. ...

2019

• https://docs.snowflake.net/manuals/user-guide/intro-key-concepts.html
  • QUOTE: ... Snowflake’s data warehouse is not built on an existing database or “big data” software platform such as Hadoop. The Snowflake data warehouse uses a new SQL database engine with a unique architecture designed for the cloud. To the user, Snowflake has many similarities to other enterprise data warehouses, but also has additional functionality and unique capabilities. ...

     Snowflake’s data warehouse is a true SaaS offering. More specifically:

    • There is no hardware (virtual or physical) for you to select, install, configure, or manage.
    • There is no software for you to install, configure, or manage.
    • Ongoing maintenance, management, and tuning is handled by Snowflake.
  • Snowflake’s architecture is a hybrid of traditional shared-disk database architectures and shared-nothing database architectures. Similar to shared-disk architectures, Snowflake uses a central data repository for persisted data that is accessible from all compute nodes in the data warehouse. But similar to shared nothing architectures, Snowflake processes queries using MPP (massively parallel processing) compute clusters where each node in the cluster stores a portion of the entire data set locally. This approach offers the data management simplicity of a shared-disk architecture, but with the performance and scale-out benefits of a shared-nothing architecture.

    

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