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⇱ Model, Search, and Visualize Live Snowflake Data in ThoughtSpot

Model, Search, and Visualize Live Snowflake Data in ThoughtSpot

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to live Snowflake data for modeling, searching, and visualizing.

ThoughtSpot is a cloud-based analytics platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to help users analyze data and make decisions. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Snowflake data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Snowflake and build visualizations from Snowflake data in ThoughtSpot.

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


CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Snowflake, allowing you to easily build models and visualizations from live Snowflake data in ThoughtSpot. As you build visualizations, ThoughtSpot generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Snowflake, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Snowflake data.

Configure Snowflake Connectivity for ThoughtSpot

Connectivity to Snowflake from ThoughtSpot is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Snowflake data from ThoughtSpot, 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 ThoughtSpot.

Model, Search, and Visualize Live Snowflake Data in ThoughtSpot

To establish a connection from ThoughtSpot to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.

  1. Log into ThoughtSpot
  2. On the top navigation bar, click Data.
  3. Click Create new > Connection. 👁 Creating a new connection.
  4. Name the connection and click "SQL Server" as the data warehouse. 👁 Selecting SQL Server as the connection type.
  5. Click Continue on the top right.
  6. Enter the connection settings:
    • Host: enter the Virtual SQL Server endpoint: tds.cdata.com
    • Port: : enter 14333
    • Username: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected].
    • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page.
    • Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, Snowflake1).
    👁 Configuring the connection to the Virtual SQL Server API
  7. Click Continue.
  8. After connecting successfully, you will be able to choose which tables to include. 👁 Selecting tables (Salesforce is shown).
  9. Click Create Connection.

After you successfully configure your connection, you can build models, search, and visualize your Snowflake data.

Real-Time Access to Snowflake Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Snowflake data from ThoughtSpot. You can model, search, and visualize your data from ThoughtSpot . For more information on gaining live access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like ThoughtSpot, refer to our Connect AI page.