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Connect DataData Warehouses

Snowflake

You connect Snowflake from the DataSquares connection wizard. Connect with your account identifier and a virtual warehouse.

  1. In DataSquares, open Data Sources and choose Connect Source. The Connect a data source page opens.

  2. Pick Snowflake on that page (search or browse by category).

  3. Fill in the connection details below, then test the connection and save.

Connection details

Section titled “Connection details”
Field What to enter
Account identifier Your Snowflake account identifier (e.g. xy12345.eu-central-1).
Warehouse The virtual warehouse queries should run on.
Role Optional — a role with read access to the databases you want to analyze.
Database The database to connect to.
Username / Password Credentials for the connecting user.

Finding your account identifier

Section titled “Finding your account identifier”

Use the account identifier from Snowsight (Admin → Accounts), in the orgname-account_name form — or the legacy locator form like xy12345.eu-central-1. Don’t include .snowflakecomputing.com.

Grant what the role needs

Section titled “Grant what the role needs”

The connecting user’s role needs usage on the warehouse and database, plus read on the schemas:

CREATE ROLE IF NOT EXISTS DATASQUARES_READER;
GRANT USAGE ON WAREHOUSE analytics_wh TO ROLE DATASQUARES_READER;
GRANT USAGE ON DATABASE analytics TO ROLE DATASQUARES_READER;
GRANT USAGE ON ALL SCHEMAS IN DATABASE analytics TO ROLE DATASQUARES_READER;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN DATABASE analytics TO ROLE DATASQUARES_READER;
GRANT ROLE DATASQUARES_READER TO USER datasquares;

Key-pair authentication (needed for pipelines)

Section titled “Key-pair authentication (needed for pipelines)”

Queries work with a password, but pipeline extract and warehouse-copy load use Snowflake’s SQL API, which accepts only key-pair authentication.

  1. Generate an unencrypted PKCS#8 key and its public key: openssl genrsa 2048 | openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -inform PEM -out rsa_key.p8 -nocrypt then openssl rsa -in rsa_key.p8 -pubout -out rsa_key.pub.
  2. Assign the public key to the connection user: ALTER USER <user> SET RSA_PUBLIC_KEY='<contents of rsa_key.pub without the header lines>';
  3. Paste the whole rsa_key.p8 (starting -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----) into Private key (PEM). You can leave the password empty. An encrypted key is refused — export it without a passphrase.

Bulk staging (S3) for pipelines

Section titled “Bulk staging (S3) for pipelines”

Pipeline extract and load move data through an S3 bucket with Snowflake’s own COPY. Under Bulk staging (S3) enter the bucket, an optional prefix and region, and an access key pair that can read and write the bucket. Leave the bucket empty for no staging; on edit, leaving a key field empty keeps the stored key.

Common errors

Section titled “Common errors”

Test Connection shows a short summary, such as Authentication failed — check the username and password. The text below is what the database itself reports, for example in the SQL editor.

Error Cause / fix
Incorrect username or password also raised for a wrong account identifier — verify it first
No active warehouse the role lacks USAGE on the warehouse named in the form
Object does not exist or not authorized missing database/schema grants for the role
network error from a corporate account a Snowflake network policy may need to allowlist the DataSquares server’s IP
Section titled “Related”