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Snowflake streaming source

Last update: Fri Sep 29 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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IMPORTANT
  • The Snowflake streaming source is in beta. Please read the Sources overview for more information on using beta-labeled sources.
  • The Snowflake streaming source is available in the API to users who have purchased Real-Time Customer Data Platform Ultimate.

Adobe Experience Platform allows data to be ingested from external sources while providing you with the ability to structure, label, and enhance incoming data using Platform services. You can ingest data from a variety of sources such as Adobe applications, cloud-based storage, databases, and many others.

Experience Platform provides support for streaming data from a Snowflake database.

Understanding the Snowflake streaming source

The Snowflake streaming source works by having data loaded by periodically executing an SQL query and creating an output record for each row in the resulting set.

By using Kafka Connect, the Snowflake streaming source tracks the latest record that it receives from each table, so that it can start in the correct location for the next iteration. The source uses this functionality to filter data and only get the updated rows from a table on each iteration.

Prerequisites

The following section outlines prerequisite steps to complete before you can stream data from your Snowflake database to Experience Platform:

Gather required credentials

In order for Flow Service to connect with Snowflake, you must provide the following connection properties:

Credential
Description
account
The full account name associated with your Snowflake account. A fully qualified Snowflake account name includes your account name, region, and cloud platform. For example, cj12345.east-us-2.azure. For more information on account names, refer to this Snowflake document on account identifiers.
warehouse
The Snowflake warehouse manages the query execution process for the application. Each Snowflake warehouse is independent from one another and must be accessed individually when bringing data over to Platform.
database
The Snowflake database contains the data you want to bring the Platform.
username
The username for the Snowflake account.
password
The password for the Snowflake user account.
role
(Optional) A custom-defined role that can be provided for a user, for a given connection. If unprovided, this value defaults to public.
connectionSpec.id
The connection specification returns a source’s connector properties, including authentication specifications related to creating the base and source connections. The connection specification ID for Snowflake is 51ae16c2-bdad-42fd-9fce-8d5dfddaf140.

For more information about authentication, refer to this Snowflake document.

Configure role settings configure-role-settings

You must configure privileges to a role, even if the default public role is assigned, to allow your source connection to access the relevant Snowflake database, schema, and table. The various privileges for different Snowflake entities is as follows:

Snowflake entity
Require role privilege
Warehouse
OPERATE, USAGE
Database
USAGE
Schema
USAGE
Table
SELECT
NOTE
Auto-resume and auto-suspend must be enabled in the advanced settings configuration of your warehouse.

For more information on role and privilege management, refer to the Snowflake API reference.

Limitations and frequently asked questions limitations-and-frequently-asked-questions

  • The data throughput for the Snowflake source is 2000 records per second.

  • Pricing can vary depending on the amount of time that a warehouse is active and the size of the warehouse. For the Snowflake source integration, the smallest size, x-small warehouse is sufficient. It is suggested to enable auto-suspend so that the warehouse can suspend on its own when not in use.

  • The Snowflake source polls the database for new data every 10 seconds.

  • Configuration options:

    • You can enable a backfill boolean flag for your Snowflake source when creating a source connection.

      • If backfill is set to true, then the value for timestamp.initial is set to 0. This means that data with a timestamp column greater than 0 epoch time are fetched.
      • If backfill is set to false, then the value for timestamp.initial is set to -1. This means that data with a timestamp column greater than the current time (the time in which the source begins ingesting) are fetched.

    • The timestamp column should be formatted as type: TIMESTAMP_LTZ or TIMESTAMP_NTZ. If the timestamp column is set to TIMESTAMP_NTZ, then the corresponding timezone in which the values are stored should be passed via the timezoneValue parameter. If unprovided, the value will default to UTC.

      • TIMESTAMP_TZ cannot be used a timestamp column or in a mapping.

Next steps

The following tutorial provides steps on how to connect your Snowflake streaming source to Experience Platform using the API:

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