Installing SnowSQL, Testing and using Auto-Login

SHOUT OUT – Need to give Danny Bryant (@dbaontap) a huge thanks for taking my call today and setting me on the right path when dealing with Snowflake.  Thanks buddy!!!

Today I’ve been reviewing and playing with Snowflake through their developer platform (https://developer.snowflake.com). Getting setup was pretty painless other than having to provide contact information; guess that is the price you pay when wanting to play with a platform that many customers are moving too.  

After a few minutes the Snowflake environment you request is built and an email is sent to the email address you provided during registration.  Once you activate your account, you are taken to a “worksheets” page inside of Snowflake. At this point, you can do a lot of different thing while you are looking around; however, if you want to get a good understanding of the environment, you’ll need to download “snowsql”.

“SnowSQL” is Snowflake command line tool for interacting your databases.  You will have to download this utility by going to Help -> Downloads

This will bring up the Downloads dialog.  Select the CLI Client and download for your platform.  Then install SnowSQL as advised.

At the end of the installation, Snowflake provides a few additional steps that have to be done.  These steps are for testing SnowSQL as well as giving you a glimpse into how to configure for auto-login.  

Testing SnowSQL

After the installation of SnowSQL is complete, it can quickly be testing by executing the following:

$ snowsql -a <account_name> -u <login_name>

In my case, my development environment name is ct7#####.east-us-2.azure and my development login in bcurt??.  When you hit return, the interface will prompt for your password. By providing your password, you should be logged into Snowflake and given a default prompt.

This validates that SnowSQL is working and can be used to interact with your Snowflake environment.  

Automating the Login

Once you have validated that SnowSQL is working and can login to your account, you have the option of automating the process.  This is done by editing the the config file that is located in ~/.snowsql/config. In the configuration file, you can setup different types of connections.  The configuration file give you a default section that is for example.

[connections.example]

accountname = <account name>
username = <user name>
password = <password>

Update the information in the configuration file and you will be able to login to your Snowflake environment without being prompted for a password.  A word of caution here though – passwords that are stored in the configuration file are in clear text and you need to take appropriate measures to ensure that they are secured.

Login to Snowflake using the example connection

With the your settings in the configuration file set, you can login to Snowflake by simply calling snowsql and passing it a connection option.

$ snowsql -c example

Notice that once connected you still don’t have the correct warehouse (possible), no database, and no schema selected.  You can spend the time to run the SQL commands to make changes for all these items within the context if needed; however, you can also use the configuration file to add these items to make it easier.

Updated Config File

In the configuration file (~/.snowsql/config), the connection settings can be expanded to include items that you may be missing for the connection.  In this example, I have created a new connection settings called “bobby”

[connections.bobby]

accountname = <account name>
username = <user name>
password = <password>
dbname = sf_tuts
schemaname = public
Warehouse = sf_tuts_wh

After saving the file, you can return to the command prompt and attempt to connect using the “bobby” connection settings.

$ snowsql -c bobby

Now when logging into the Snowflake environment, I can go directly to the database, schema, and warehouse I want to be in.

Summary

With Snowflake being one of the more popular data warehouse environments it is great to see that they have made it easy to connect to and start working with.  The developer platform is a great platform to get up and running with and to start understanding what this platform can do. With the ability to auto-login to the environment, makes it easy for administrators to work with this platform.  Give it a try and see how it works for you.

Quickly setup a Developer platform at https://developer.snowflake.com

Enjoy!!!

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