VOOZH about

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/snowflake-cloud-power-query.rst

⇱ Work with Live Snowflake Data in Power Query

Work with Live Snowflake Data in Power Query

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Snowflake data and work with live Snowflake data in Microsoft Power Query.

Power Query is a data transformation and data preparation engine. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Snowflake data from Power Query. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Query through Microsoft Excel and get live access to Snowflake data for transformation and preparation.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Snowflake, allowing you to easily integrate with live Snowflake data in Power Query — without replicating the data. CData Connect AI looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Query and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Snowflake, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Snowflake data.

About Snowflake Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Snowflake data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Reads and write Snowflake data quickly and efficiently.
  • Dynamically obtain metadata for the specified Warehouse, Database, and Schema.
  • Authenticate in a variety of ways, including OAuth, OKTA, Azure AD, Azure Managed Service Identity, PingFederate, private key, and more.

Many CData users use CData solutions to access Snowflake from their preferred tools and applications, and replicate data from their disparate systems into Snowflake for comprehensive warehousing and analytics.

For more information on integrating Snowflake with CData solutions, refer to our blog: https://www.cdata.com/blog/snowflake-integrations.


Getting Started


Configure Snowflake Connectivity for Power Query

Connectivity to Snowflake from Power Query is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Snowflake data from Power Query, we start by creating and configuring a Snowflake connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Snowflake" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Snowflake.

    To connect to Snowflake:

    1. Set User and Password to your Snowflake credentials and set the AuthScheme property to PASSWORD or OKTA.
    2. Set URL to the URL of the Snowflake instance (i.e.: https://myaccount.snowflakecomputing.com).
    3. Set Warehouse to the Snowflake warehouse.
    4. (Optional) Set Account to your Snowflake account if your URL does not conform to the format above.
    5. (Optional) Set Database and Schema to restrict the tables and views exposed.
    6. (Optional) If MFA is enabled on your Snowflake account (via Duo Security), set MFACode to the passcode generated by your Duo authenticator app.

    See the Getting Started guide in the CData driver documentation for more information.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Snowflake Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Snowflake data from Power Query.

Working with Live Snowflake Data in Power Query

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to work with live Snowflake data in Power Query.

  1. In Microsoft Excel, open the Power Query Editor (from the Data ribbon, click Get Data -> Launch Power Query Editor) 👁 Opening the Power Query Editor
  2. Click New Source -> SQL Server 👁 Creating a new SQL Server Source
  3. In the SQL Server database modal:
    • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333
    • (Optional) Set Database to the name of the Snowflake connection (e.g. Snowflake1 )
    👁 Configuring the Server
  4. In the SQL Server credentials modal, select "Database" and
    • Set User to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected] )
    • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
    👁 Configuring the credentials
  5. Click Connect
  6. Select the table(s) you wish to work with in the Navigator and click "OK" 👁 Selecting the table(s) (Salesforce is shown)

At this point, you have live access to Snowflake data from Power Query for transformation and preparation.

👁 Working with data in Power Query (Salesforce is shown)

SQL Access to Snowflake Data

Now you have a direct connection to live Snowflake data from Microsoft Power Query. You can create more connections and transform and preparte your data to better drive business — all without replicating Snowflake data.

To get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.