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Snowflake Tables

Working with Snowflake-specific table properties

SqlDBM Support avatar
Written by SqlDBM Support
Updated this week

The following options and parameters are available for creating and configuring tables in Snowflake projects.

Snowflake table types

In Snowflake, tables can be created as permanent, transient, and temporary, affecting their data-retention properties.

  • Permanent  —  this is the default table type. Permanent tables always ensure seven days of fail-safe storage. Time travel is enabled by default but can be configured from a minimum of zero to a maximum of one or ninety days, depending on the regular or enterprise license type.

  • Transient  —  behave just like permanent tables but do not have a fail-safe backup

  • Temporary  —  exist only for the duration of the session in which they were created. Because they do not persist past the session, temporary tables are not supported in SqlDBM.

Snowflake table properties

Naming and case-sensitivity

All SqlDBM objects must have a unique physical name (in physical project types), taking the schema into account. The logical name is used for metadata and descriptive purposes.

As Snowflake uses case-sensitive naming through double quotes or otherwise defaults to uppercase, the "Use quotes" property is available for table, column, and schema names on Snowflake tables.

To mark a table or column name as case-sensitive, tick the "Use quotes" property next to it.

Where selected, double quotes will be included in the DDL in Forward Engineering.

Options

Transient

Mark "Transient" to identify the table as transient. Transient tables are specifically designed for data that needs to be maintained beyond each session (in contrast to temporary tables) but do not need the same level of data protection and recovery provided by permanent tables.

Data Retention Time (Days):

When data in a table is modified, including deletion of data or dropping an object containing data, Snowflake preserves the state of the data before the update. The data retention period specifies the number of days for which this historical data is preserved. Therefore, Time Travel operations (SELECT, CREATE … CLONE, UNDROP) can be performed on the data.

File Format

Specifies the file format in which data can be unloaded from this table.

Column templates

Select a column template to apply its columns to the table. Multiple templates can be added. Columns added via a template can only be edited within the template itself.

Visibility

Affects the table's visibility in:

  • Different view modes

  • Import to the Logical Project

  • DDL generated during forward engineering (FE)

Refer to the table below to understand how the selected visibility settings affect the table. Visibility can also be assigned at the column level; table-level visibility takes precedence in case of a conflict.

Visibility

View in (view mode)

Included in Logical Project Import

Generated in Forward Engineering (FE)

Physical & Logical

All

Yes

Yes

Logical only

Logical

Yes

No

Physical only

Physical, Pk/Ak, Key

No

Yes

Post script

Include an ad-hoc SQL statement to be generated after the create script in Forward Engineering.

Copy options

Loads data from staged files to an existing table. The files must already be staged in one of the following locations:

  • Named internal stage (or table/user stage). Files can be staged using the PUT command.

  • The named external stage references an external location (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure).

  • External location (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure).

See also:

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