The Data Warrior

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Archive for the tag “Data Cloud”

Thank You Snowflake!

(Artwork by Francis Mao)

After six years and one month as the global evangelist for Snowflake (and almost 40 years in IT), I’ve decided to slow down and begin easing into retirement. As such, today is my last day at Snowflake.

I loved the Snowflake product so much that I gave up independent consulting to sign on (as employee 105) with this scrappy little startup in Silicon Valley (my first) and take a chance. Now at the end of 2021, the product is even more amazing than when I started and with #TheDataCloud it is changing the world of data.

The people and culture established by the founders, Benoit and Thierry, along with the leadership of Bob Muglia, Denise Persson, Chris Degnan, and Frank Slootman, have made this the best job (and longest) of my career. I cannot imagine a better way to bring this chapter to an end.

Thank you, Benoit and Thierry, for your vision and for inventing a new architecture for databases.

Thank you, Kyle Rourke and Todd Beauchene for introducing me to this amazing technology at that tiny meetup in Denver. Know you changed my life!

And finally, thank you Francis Mao for your incredible artwork (above) and especially for my Data Superhero uniform and avatar. The #DataWarrior never looked better!

It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with Snowflake from startup thru hypergrowth to the largest software IPO in history! What a wild and adventurous ride it has been. And I know the team will continue to go far and continue to disrupt the way we manage and get value from data long into the future (I am counting on it…after all I am a shareholder too!).

#LetItSnow

#OneTeam #OneDream

Kent Graziano

Chief Technical Evangelist (Emeritus), Snowflake

Snowday! Sunny, with a 100% Chance of Innovation

What a great event! So many announcements and great demos, plus and awesome live Q&A with our Snowflake leaders.

At Snowday 2021, Snowflake announced exciting new product capabilities that expand what is possible in the Data Cloud. In addition to announcing Python support in Snowpark (currently in private preview), these latest innovations make it easier for organizations to maintain business continuity across clouds and regions; help data engineers and data scientists build pipelines, ML workflows, and data applications faster; and remove the complexity of getting the right data into the hands of customers.

The Snowflake Data Cloud is a global network connecting organizations through data, creating new opportunities for collaboration to improve business outcomes, and fundamentally changing what is possible across industries. For Kraft Heinz, its data science teams are able to build and test models dramatically faster in Snowflake compared with its prior data lake. For NBCUniversal, it’s building brand-new advertising targeting and measurement products, in a secure and privacy-compliant way using Snowflake’s governance and data sharing capabilities. And for 84.51°, it’s built a Collaborative Cloud that takes complexity off the table and unlocks new possibilities for grocers and CPGs sharing and collaborating on data.

Snowflake continues to expand the scope and possibilities of the Data Cloud, delivering unique innovations that enable customers to:

  • Operate globally
  • Eliminate silos
  • Build faster
  • Create new businesses

Catch up on all the details on the  Snowflake blog.

Check it out!

Kent

The Data Warrior

P.S. Registration for Snowflake Summit 2022 is now open!

 

Building a Real-time Data Vault in Snowflake?

Yes you can! The #DataCloud loves #DataVault!

In this day and age, with the ever-increasing availability and volume of data from many types of sources such as IoT, mobile devices, and weblogs, there is a growing need, and yes, demand, to go from batch load processes to streaming or “real-time” (RT) loading of data. Businesses are changing at an alarming rate and are becoming more competitive all the time. Those that can harness the value of their data faster to drive better business outcomes will be the ones to prevail.

One of the benefits of using the Data Vault 2.0 architecture is that it was designed from inception not only to accept data loaded using traditional batch mode (which was the prevailing mode in the early 2000s when Dan introduced Data Vault) but also to easily accept data loading in real or near-realtime (NRT). In the early 2000s, that was a nice-to-have aspect of the approach and meant the methodology was effectively future-proofed from that perspective. Still, few database systems had the capacity to support that kind of requirement. Today, RT or at least NRT loading is almost becoming a mandatory requirement for modern data platforms. Granted, not all loads or use cases need to be NRT, but most forward-thinking organizations need to onboard data for analytics in an NRT manner.

See all the details (and some code) in the full post over on Data Vault Alliance.

Happy Vaulting!

Kent

The Data Warrior

The Data Cloud Tour: Mobilize a World of Data

6 INDUSTRY EVENTS

4 REGIONS!

Most years I have been at Snowflake, we have done Data for Breakfast events all over the world to kick off a new year. But this year is different, so instead we are launching a virtual #DataCloud Tour! Join us to learn how the Data Cloud can power your data strategies and help you deliver innovative and industry-leading products and services.

In this tour we will actually run seven different events in each region – one for the generalist and then separate sessions for these industries:

  1. Healthcare and Life Sciences
  2. Financial Services
  3. Public Sector
  4. Retail & CPG
  5. Media, Entertainment, & Advertising
  6. Manufacturing

Each event will bring you industry SMEs talking about how the Data Cloud has helped them be data leaders and succeed in getting the more value from their data in the most cost effective manner. In the talks you will learn how to break down data silos with The Data Cloud and how you can put the Snowflake platform to work for your company.

The Data Cloud is a global network where thousands of organizations mobilize data with near-unlimited scale, concurrency, and performance. Inside the Data Cloud, you can unite your siloed data, easily discover and securely share governed data, and execute diverse analytic workloads.

See the full agenda and reserve your spot (#Free) here: The Data Cloud Tour

#MobilizeYourData

Kent

The Data Warrior & Chief Technical Evangelist, Snowflake

Data Vault 2.0 Automation with erwin and Snowflake

I am seeing a HUGE uptick in interest in Data Vault around the globe. Part of the interest is the need for agility in building a modern data platform. One of the benefits of the Data Vault 2.0 method is the repeatable patterns which lend themselves to automation.  I am please to pass on this great new post with details on how to automate building your Data Vault 2.0 architecture on Snowflake using erwin! Thanks to my buddy John Carter at erwin for taking this project on.

The Data Vault methodology can be applied to almost any data store and populated by almost any ETL or ELT data integration tool. As Snowflake Chief Technical Evangelist Kent Graziano mentions in one of his many blog posts, “DV (Data Vault) was developed specifically to address agility, flexibility, and scalability issues found in the other mainstream data modeling approaches used in the data warehousing space.” In other words, it enables you to build a scalable data warehouse that can incorporate disparate data sources over time. Traditional data warehousing typically requires refactoring to integrate new sources, but when implemented correctly, Data Vault 2.0 requires no refactoring.

Successfully implementing a Data Vault solution requires skilled resources and traditionally entails a lot of manual effort to define the Data Vault pipeline and create ETL (or ELT) code from scratch. The entire process can take months or even years, and it is often riddled with errors, slowing down the data pipeline. Automating design changes and the code to process data movement ensures organizations can accelerate development and deployment in a timely and cost-effective manner, speeding the time to value of the data.

Snowflake’s Data Cloud contains all the necessary components for building, populating, and managing Data Vault 2.0 solutions. erwin’s toolset models, maps, and automates the creation, population, and maintenance of Data Vault solutions on Snowflake. The combination of Snowflake and erwin provides an end-to-end solution for a governed Data Vault with powerful performance.

Get the rest of the details here: Data Vault Automation with erwin and Snowflake

Vault away my friends!

Kent

The Data Warrior

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