The Data Warrior

Data Engineering Podcast – What is Snowflake?

A few months back I had the privilege of being interviewed by Tobias Macey on his Data Engineering Podcast show. This came about because Tobias actually Tweeted at me about wanting to do the interview! In this episode we spent an hour discussing the ins and outs of the Snowflake Cloud Data Platform. You can find it here. Hope you enjoy it!

Interview Outline

• How did you get involved in the area of data management?
• Can you start by explaining what Snowflake is for anyone who isn’t familiar with it?
  • How does it compare to the other available platforms for data warehousing?
  • How does it differ from traditional data warehouses?
    • How does the performance and flexibility affect the data modeling requirements?
• Snowflake is one of the data stores that is enabling the shift from an ETL to an ELT workflow. What are the features that allow for that approach and what are some of the challenges that it introduces?
• Can you describe how the platform is architected and some of the ways that it has evolved as it has grown in popularity?
  • What are some of the current limitations that you are struggling with?
• For someone getting started with Snowflake what is involved with loading data into the platform?
  • What is their workflow for allocating and scaling compute capacity and running analyses?
• One of the interesting features enabled by your architecture is data sharing. What are some of the most interesting or unexpected uses of that capability that you have seen?
• What are some other features or use cases for Snowflake that are not as well known or publicized which you think users should know about?
• When is Snowflake the wrong choice?
• What are some of the plans for the future of Snowflake?

This is a great podcast series, so you might want to add it to your regular list!

Cheers.

Kent

The Data Warrior & Chief Technical Evangelist at Snowflake