Snowflake Cheat Sheet

Warehouses

CREATE WAREHOUSE etl_wh WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'SMALL' AUTO_SUSPEND = 60 AUTO_RESUME = TRUE;
ALTER WAREHOUSE etl_wh SET WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'MEDIUM';
ALTER WAREHOUSE etl_wh SUSPEND;
USE WAREHOUSE etl_wh;

Loading files

CREATE STAGE raw_stage URL = 's3://bucket/raw/' STORAGE_INTEGRATION = my_integration;
COPY INTO raw.orders
FROM @raw_stage/orders/
FILE_FORMAT = (TYPE = 'CSV' SKIP_HEADER = 1)
ON_ERROR = 'ABORT_STATEMENT';

COPY INTO tracks which files were already loaded and skips them on rerun by default.

Upsert

MERGE INTO dim_customer t
USING stg_customer s ON t.customer_id = s.customer_id
WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET t.city = s.city
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN INSERT (customer_id, city) VALUES (s.customer_id, s.city);

Time Travel and cloning

SELECT * FROM orders AT (OFFSET => -60 * 60);           -- one hour ago
SELECT * FROM orders BEFORE (STATEMENT => '<query_id>');
UNDROP TABLE orders;
CREATE TABLE orders_backup CLONE orders;                 -- zero-copy clone

Retention depends on edition and table settings.

Clustering

ALTER TABLE sales CLUSTER BY (sale_date);
SELECT SYSTEM$CLUSTERING_INFORMATION('sales', '(sale_date)');

Semi-structured data

SELECT payload:customer.id::STRING AS customer_id
FROM raw.events;                       -- VARIANT path access with a cast

Cost habits

Habit	Why
Auto-suspend on every warehouse	Stop paying when idle
One warehouse per workload	Size and attribute cost separately
Check “partitions scanned” in the query profile	Fix pruning before scaling up
Resource monitors	Alert or suspend at credit limits