Snowflake

Nigel Light

We have been experimenting with Snowflake technology and were wondering whether anybody has experience of using this as a source for Aperture.

Nigel

Akshay Davis

I've not used it directly, but there is a JDBC driver, which you should able to use with Data Studio https://docs.snowflake.net/manuals/user-guide/jdbc.html

The one thing to look out for are any specific data types which Data Studio can't interpret. These should be obvious in the logs though.

I'd be interested to know how you get on with using it.

Nigel Light

Thanks Akshay - I'll mention it to the team and will keep you posted

Nigel Light

Presumably we just drop it into D:\ApertureDataStudio\drivers\jdbc  ?

Nigel Light

… and are there any particular things that we need to do re:opening ports etc?

Clinton Jones

Data Studio can already pick up and use any type-4 (i.e. vaguely modern) JDBC driver.

When you add the snowflake driver (snowflake-jdbc-3.6.2.jar) to C:\ApertureDataStudio\drivers\jdbc you see it added to the list of DBMS types automatically:

Data Studio isn't able to figure out the name of the DBMS from the driver and it cannot be renamed.

When you go to create a connection with this driver, you will need to define the connection string explicitly:

Info on creating the connection string is well defined in the snowflake JDBC doc: https://docs.snowflake.net/manuals/user-guide/jdbc-configure.html

credit to @Henry Simms for giving me this original info

Nigel Light

Hi @Henry Simms

cc:@Pavan Rao @Clinton Jones

Back to Snowflake here again (after s short break) - can you please confirm whether this applies to Aperture 2?

Thanks

Nige

Henry Simms

Hi @Nigel Light

In Data Studio v2, the process should be somewhat more straightforward. You'll still need to download the JDBC driver and add it as a custom driver, as described here: https://docs.experianaperture.io/data-quality/aperture-data-studio-v2/uncategorized/custom-jdbc-drivers/

When you go to configure the connection in the UI, though, you'll get a lot more help. The elements you need to provide to establish the connection (Account, warehouse, database and schema) will appear as fields to be populated, and the connection string will be constructed behind the scenes:

Henry

Nigel Light

Thanks @Henry Simms . I have managed to download the driver and got it to appear in the list ok. Hopefully I've added a custom string for the connection ok too - just waiting to get an account/password set up with appropriate authorisations to try it out. One question - do we need to do anything re:port numbers? Regards Nige

Henry Simms

Hi @Nigel Light , the driver will just use the default HTTPS port 443, which should already be open. You can check by browsing to the Snowflake web-based user interface from the Data Studio server to confirm. This will also check that the IP is on the Snowflake allow list (https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/network-policies.html).

You'll only need to configure a port if connecting to Snowflake via a proxy server, in which case these steps will help: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/jdbc-configure.html#connecting-using-a-proxy-server

Nigel Light

Thanks @Henry Simms - hopefully just about there now. Nige