Snowflake Concepts for Datashare

This primer introduces the Snowflake terms that analytics and BI teams encounter when connecting to Unqork Datashare. It is intended for teams who are familiar with databases but new to Snowflake specifically.

Account

A Snowflake account is the primary access point for an organization's Snowflake environment. Each account has a unique identifier for connecting BI tools, typically in the format orgname-accountname or as a URL like xyz12345.snowflakecomputing.com.

Database

A database is a logical container that holds or more schemas. In Datashare, Unqork creates and manages a database that contains the module data. No customer provisioning is required.

Schema

A schema organizes objects in a database, like a folder in a folder. Unqork's Datashare database includes a schema that contains the data tables. A BI tool connection requires both the database name and the schema name, which Unqork Support provides.

Table

A table stores data in rows and columns, like a spreadsheet. Datashare provides table for each record type: submissions, tracker, service log, and revisions. Each row in the submissions table represents submission record from a module.

Warehouse

A Snowflake warehouse is a compute cluster that runs queries. Warehouses do not store data. They process it. When a report runs or a dashboard refreshes in a BI tool, the warehouse executes the underlying query against the data.

Because Datashare requires a customer-owned Snowflake account, the warehouse in that account runs queries against shared Unqork data.

Role

A role controls what a user can see and do in Snowflake. Roles are assigned to users and grant access to specific databases, schemas, tables, and warehouses.

Data Share

A Snowflake Data Share is the mechanism Unqork uses to give a customer's Snowflake account access to data. No data is copied. The share grants read-only access to Unqork's data through Snowflake's services layer, so Datashare data does not consume storage in the customer's Snowflake account.

View

A Snowflake view is a saved query that presents data from or more tables as if it were a table itself. Views can be used in a BI tool the same way as tables, as a data source for reports and dashboards.