Connecting to Snowflake - Various options of Snowflake connectivity

As mentioned in the previous section Snowflake is a SaaS service which is hosted on the Cloud platform. In this section we will see all the options available for the customers to connect to their Snowflake instance.

Snowflake is a powerful data warehouse that provides various ways to connect to the Snowflake database. There are many options including Snowsifht, SnowSQL, Snowflake Classic Console for connecting to the Snowflake database.

Understanding Snowflake Ecosystem

Snowflake is a widely used data-warehouse and there are many 3rd-party tools and technologies, which makes it much easier for you to manage and analyse your data. Such 3rd-party tools also connect with the Snowflake database instance if authorised. Some of the 3rd-party tools are Talend, Informatica, Oracle, Tableau, Fortanix and many others. These 3rd-party tools use SnowSQL (command line interface), connectors for Python and Spark, and drivers for Node.js, JDBC, ODBC etc. to connect to the Snowflake for their work.

Here are the ways of connecting to Snowflake Database

Snowsight

The Snowsight is the Web Interface for Snowflake, which allows you to connect to your Database using the web browser and manage it. Snowsight comes with a powerful UI for running the SQL statements and easily maintaining your database. You can also run various jobs, load data, unload data and manage your account. You must learn to use Snowsight to perform critical Snowflake database operations.

SnowSQL (CLI Client)

SnowSQL is the command line client which can be installed on the supported operating system and can be used for connecting to Snowflake to execute SQL queries. You will be able to perform all DDL and DML operations though SnowSQL Client. You can also run queries to load and unload data to and from your database instance.

You must first install SnowSQL and configure your credentials to connect to your database instance. Once it is configured you will be able to connect to the Snowflake database instance and perform various operations on your database.

Here is the list of Supported Operating System

Classic Console

The Classic Console is also popular among Snowflake developers for performing tasks that would normally be performed using SQL and the command line. This tool is also very handy for the Snowflake developers and administrators.

Snowflake Extension for Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is also a very popular tool among the developers of many different technologies. Snowflake developed and distributed Extension for Visual Studio Code, which makes it very easy for developers to connect to Snowflake within Visual Studio Code. Once connected to the Snowflake database instance you can easily perform SQL operations against your database.