Snowflake Concepts for Datashare

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

Account

A Snowflake account is the primary access point for your organization's Snowflake environment. Each account has a unique identifier that you use to connect your BI tool, typically in the format orgname-accountname or as a URL like xyz12345.snowflakecomputing.com.

When Unqork provisions your Datashare connection, the account identifier is included in the credentials provided by Support.

Database

A database is a logical container that holds one or more schemas. In Datashare, Unqork creates a database that contains your module data. You do not create or manage this database. Unqork handles provisioning.

Schema

A schema organizes objects in a database, like a folder in a folder. Unqork's Datashare database includes a schema that contains your data tables. Your 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 one table for each record type: submissions, tracker, service log, and revisions. Each row in the submissions table represents one 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 you run a report or refresh a dashboard in your BI tool, the warehouse executes the underlying query against the data.

Because Datashare requires a customer-owned Snowflake account, you use a warehouse in your own account to run 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. When Unqork provisions your connection, Support creates a role with the permissions needed to query your Datashare tables.

Data Share

A Snowflake Data Share is the mechanism Unqork uses to give your 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 your Snowflake account.

View

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