Product and Technology

New Snowflake Features Released in August 2023

New Snowflake Features Released in August 2023

In August, Snowflake released new features around Snowpark for Python, DevOps, pipeline replication, and more. Read on to learn more about the full set of features that were just announced.

Snowpark Python Updates

Snowpark support for Python 3.9 and 3.10 - general availability 

Python versions 3.9 and 3.10 in Snowpark are now generally available, including support for UDFs, UDTFs, and stored procedures. Read Snowflake Documentation to learn how to set up your development environment for Snowpark Python. 

Snowpark External Access - public preview 

External Access is in public preview on AWS regions. Users can now easily connect to external network locations, including external LLMs, from their Snowpark code while maintaining high security and governance over their data. See the Snowflake Documentation for more information and get started today using the Quickstart Guide.

Tabular Return Values from Python Stored Procedures - general availability 

The general availability of tabular stored procedures with a handler written in Python enables data to be returned in a table format. Learn more.

Vectorized User-Defined Table Functions - public preview 

Vectorized Python UDTFs enable seamless partition-by-partition processing by operating on partitions as pandas DataFrames, and returning results as pandas DataFrames or lists of pandas Series or arrays. Learn more.

DevOps

Deploy and Manage Snowflake objects and code with ease - public preview 

You now have the ability to execute a SQL script directly from a file on a stage, such as from VS code, or a Snowflake Native App with the EXECUTE IMMEDIATE FROM command now in public preview. 

This feature provides a mechanism to control the deployment and management of your Snowflake objects and code. For example, you can execute a stored script to create a standard Snowflake environment for all your accounts. Learn more

Observability

Notifications for better observability - general availability 

With this release, the SYSTEM$SEND_EMAIL() system stored procedure is generally available for sending email notifications. You can call this stored procedure to send an email notification from a task, your own stored procedure, or an interactive session. Learn more here

Business Continuity

Data pipelines replication - public preview  

You can now easily replicate and failover your entire data ingestion and transformations pipelines in Snowflake. This new functionality enables the replication and failover of storage integrations, Snowpipe, internal stages, and external stages. When you now failover to a secondary region due to an outage, your data pipelines will resume and continue to ingest data while guaranteeing idempotent loads allowing customers to achieve zero data loss. Learn more.

Data Governance

Simplify masking policies on External Tables -  public preview 

Previously administrators were required to configure a view on External Tables in order to mask sensitive columns. With this preview, administrators can simply associate masking policies to virtual columns in the External Table to mask sensitive columns. This feature eliminates configuring views on External Tables just to mask sensitive columns. Learn more.

Performance

Query Hash - general availability 

Now you can analyze trends in query performance to identify inefficient queries and optimize spend. With query_hash and query_parameterized_hash, we are now exposing new query-level data to make it easier for customers to group and analyze similar queries. This new query-level data will empower existing customers to better analyze queries, quantify performance improvements, and monitor for regressions. Learn more.

Monetization

Monetize data and Snowflake Native Apps with subscription-based pricing plans - public preview

You can now offer your customers recurring and non-recurring subscription-based pricing plans for your data and app listings. When customers buy your data or Snowflake Native Application using a recurring subscription plan, they will be charged upfront before receiving access. Their subscription will auto-renew after the duration of your choice. You can also offer non-recurring pricing plans (general availability) in order to charge customers upfront once to access your data or Snowflake Native Application. Learn more.

Snowflake Experiences

Worksheet Tabs in Snowsight - general availability

Snowsight continues to get usability enhancements and an often requested feature, Worksheet tabs, is now generally available. If you are still using the Classic console, head over to documentation to learn more about upgrading to Snowsight.

Advanced Analytics

New SQL improvements: Array functions  - general availability 

Snowflake is now bringing more flexibility in array handling by providing more array functions. These features drive efficiency in coding, helping save development time and providing increased accuracy for SQL fans. Learn more about our SQL delight features.

ST_TRANSFORM for Geospatial - general availability 

To enable conversion between different spatial reference systems, the ST_TRANSFORM function is now generally available. Learn more about the GEOMETRY data type and ST_TRANSFORM on our blog.

Snowflake Marketplace

Snowflake customers can tap into Snowflake Marketplace for access to more than 2,100 live, up-to-date, and ready-to-query third-party data sets, data services, and Snowflake Native Apps in one place (as of July 31, 2023). Here are all the providers who posted new listings in August:

Commerce

Acezd

Momentum Commerce LLC

Planhat

StageZero Technologies

Connectors

Flurry Insights

Matillion

ProjectiveGroup

Demographics

InSights

No Fret Data

Economy

Dodge Construction Network

Nimbus Intelligence

Environment

ctrl+s GmbH

Financial

Equileap

ExtractAlpha

Foodtruck.ai

Grata

ICIS (Independent Commodity Intelligence Services)

RavenPack

Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ)

TipRanks

Geospatial

HtAG Analytics

Identity

Roqad

Lookup Tables

Logitix

Marketing

S&P Global Mobility

Security

aero

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​​Forward-Looking Statements

This post contains express and implied forward-looking statements, including statements regarding (i) Snowflake’s business strategy, (ii) Snowflake’s products, services, and technology offerings, including those that are under development or not generally available, (iii) market growth, trends, and competitive considerations, and (iv) the integration, interoperability, and availability of Snowflake’s products with and on third-party platforms. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, including those described under the heading “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Annual Reports of Form 10-K that Snowflake files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. As a result, you should not rely on any forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. 

© 2023 Snowflake Inc. All rights reserved. Snowflake, the Snowflake logo, and all other Snowflake product, feature, and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Snowflake Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names or logos mentioned or used herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). Snowflake may not be associated with, or be sponsored or endorsed by, any such holder(s).

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