To Snowsight or Not To Snowsight:

Back in June 2021, I was writing a chapter for our new Snowflake Essentials Book on the Snowflake Web User Interface. I intentionally delayed writing that chapter, expecting that Snowsight would be the primary Snowflake Web User Interface as part of Snow Summit 2021. Although that didn’t happen, I quickly realized that, given the circumstances and the timelines for the Snowflake Essentials book, I needed to write two separate chapters in the book to cover both the Snowflake Classic Console UI and the Preview App (Snowsight).

As I was writing Chapter 5 – Snowsight, I wondered if Snowsight was now ready to be used as the primary interface with the new changes. The UI changes that came in June/July 2021 finally made Snowsight better than ever before. Before June 2021, it was missing just too many features and the navigation was incredibly inefficient.

The new functionality in Snowsight makes it much better to use now versus the Classic Console (Autosuggest/AutoComplete, Versioning, Sharing Worksheets and Dashboards) These features enhance Snowflake’s ease of use in query and code collaboration, increasing efficiency and collaboration. While many of us who have worked with the Classic Console for years may be accustomed to it, it’s time for us to learn new UIs because the Classic Console has its limitations, particularly around sharing code and versioning. However, as of October 2021, Snowsight still has a few clunky problems you need to be aware of when switching over. We are working with the Snowsight Product Management team to get these issues fixed, so hopefully, it will happen sooner rather than later.

Let’s cover the amazing new features in Snowsight first and then cover both the Classic Console and Snowsight.

Top Snowsight Improvements:

Here’s an article by Veronika Durgin on Medium where she gives her feedback on Snowsight, the Snowflake Web Interface.

However, here’s my perspective:

1. AutoSuggest & AutoComplete

My vote by far is that the combination of what I call AutoSuggest and AutoComplete is a huge improvement and probably has already saved thousands of hours of errors and misspellings of tons of functions, tables, views, procedures, schemas, etc. This is significant and not found in the Classic version.

2. Collaboration

Collaboration is the future. While I still love using the Classic Console, it unfortunately lacks any collaboration capabilities. With Snowsight, I now have the ability to easily share Worksheets, which is huge for me because it allows me to collaborate on queries or help others with their Snowflake work – assuming we are in the same account. I’m hoping that at some point, we will be able to share it with other accounts as well.

3. Visualizations

Visualizations and Collaborations – Using Dashboards. To be frank, when Snowflake first previewed their dashboards in 2020, I didn’t find them compelling. After all, I already had tools like Sigma and Tableau that could perform all of those functions, so it was confusing to see this new feature without core administration features. The preview app wasn’t fully functional for anyone doing real Snowflake administration until roughly June 2021.

4. Versioning of all Queries

Versioning of queries is a feature available in Snowsight that allows users to save and track different versions of their SQL queries. This feature allows users to easily revert to previous versions of their queries, compare different versions, and collaborate more efficiently with others. It is a significant improvement over the Classic Console, which lacks any versioning capabilities.

 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Snowsight is an exciting new addition to the Snowflake Web User Interface that offers many valuable improvements over the Classic Console. With features like AutoSuggest and AutoComplete, collaboration capabilities, and query versioning, Snowsight is a more efficient and effective tool for working with Snowflake. While there are still some clunky problems that need to be addressed, Snowsight is definitely worth exploring for anyone who wants to optimize their Snowflake experience.

If you want more information on Snowflake updates be sure to check out our blog for more news.