How to use IBM App Connect with Snowflake

Snowflake is a fully managed SaaS (software as a service) solution that provides a single platform for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, data application development, and secure sharing and consumption of real-time or shared data.

Availability:
  • App Connect Enterprise as a Service connector
  • A local connector in a Designer instance of IBM App Connect in containers (Continuous Delivery release)Local connector in containers (Continuous Delivery release) 12.0.7.0-r3 or later
  • A local connector in a Designer instance of IBM App Connect in containers (Support Cycle 2)Local connector in containers (Long Term Support Cycle-2 release)

Connecting to Snowflake

Complete the connection fields that you see in the App Connect Designer Catalog page or flow editor. If necessary, work with your Snowflake administrator to obtain these values.

Snowflake connection fields:

Connection field Description
Endpoint URL

The account identifier for an account in your organization. This value forms part of the account URL (https://<account_identifier>.snowflakecomputing.com) that you use to log in to your Snowflake account.

  • Preferred format: Specify the account identifier in the format <orgname>-<account_name>, where:
    • <orgname> is the name of your Snowflake organization.
    • <account_name> is a unique account name in the organization.

    Example: myorg-account123

  • Legacy format: Specify the account identifier in the format <account_locator>.<cloud_region_id> or <account_locator>.<cloud_region_id>.<cloud>, where:
    • <account_locator> is a Snowflake-assigned locator, which is an alias for your account name.
    • <cloud_region_id> is a cloud region identifier.
    • <cloud> is a cloud platform identifier.

    Example: ab12345.us-east-2.aws

You can view the account identifier in the Snowflake web interface by clicking Admin > Accounts.

Locating the account identifier in the Snowflake web interface

For more information, see Account Identifiers and Connecting with a URL in the Snowflake documentation.

Username

The username of your Snowflake account.

Password

The password for the specified username.

Database

Specify the database (a logical grouping of schemas) used to organize data stored in Snowflake.

For more information, see Database, Schema, & Share DDL in the Snowflake documentation.

Schema

Specify the schema (a logical grouping of database objects) used to organize data stored in Snowflake.

For more information, see Database, Schema, & Share DDL in the Snowflake documentation.

Warehouse

The active or current warehouse (a cluster of computing resources) for the session in Snowflake.

For more information, see Virtual Warehouses in the Snowflake documentation.

Role

The active or current role (granted access privileges for objects in the system) for the session in Snowflake.

For more information, see User & Security DDL in the Snowflake documentation.

To obtain the connection values (Database, Schema, Warehouse, and Role) for Snowflake and to connect to App Connect, see Obtaining connection values for Snowflake.

To connect to a Snowflake endpoint from the App Connect Designer Catalog page for the first time, expand Snowflake, then click Connect. For more information, see Managing accounts.

Tip:

Before you use the account that is created in App Connect in a flow, rename the account to something meaningful that helps you to identify it. To rename the account on the Catalog page, select the account, open its options menu (⋮), then click Rename Account.

General considerations

Before you use App Connect Designer with Snowflake, take note of the following considerations:

  • (General consideration) You can see lists of the trigger events and actions that are available on the Catalog page of the App Connect Designer.

    For some applications, the events and actions in the catalog depend on the environment and whether the connector supports configurable events and dynamic discovery of actions. If the application supports configurable events, you see a Show more configurable events link under the events list. If the application supports dynamic discovery of actions, you see a Show more link under the actions list.

  • (General consideration) If you are using multiple accounts for an application, the set of fields that is displayed when you select an action for that application can vary for different accounts. In the flow editor, some applications always provide a curated set of static fields for an action. Other applications use dynamic discovery to retrieve the set of fields that are configured on the instance that you are connected to. For example, if you have two accounts for two instances of an application, the first account might use settings that are ready for immediate use. However, the second account might be configured with extra custom fields.

Events and actions

Snowflake events

These events are for changes in this application that trigger a flow to start completing the actions in the flow.

Note: Events are not available for changes in this application. You can trigger a flow in other ways, such as at a scheduled interval or at specific dates and times.

Snowflake actions

Your flow completes these actions on this application.

Custom SQL queries
Execute custom SQL query
Pipes
Create pipe
Retrieve pipes
Rows
Create row
Retrieve rows
Delete row
Update row
Stages
Create stage
Retrieve stages
Stored procedures
Create stored procedure
Call stored procedure
Tables
Copy data into table
Copy from table into location
Copy into table with transformation
Tasks
Create task
Update task status

Examples

Dashboard tile for a template that uses Snowflake

Use templates to quickly create flows for Snowflake

Learn how to use App Connect templates to quickly create flows that perform actions on Snowflake. For example, open the Templates gallery, and then search for Snowflake.

Snowflake flow in detailed view

Use IBM® App Connect to build flows that integrate with Snowflake.

Read the blog in the IBM Community to learn how to insert data into the Snowflake table when a new file gets created in Amazon S3. Click Read the blog to go to the blog.