How to Access Live Snowflake Data in Power Automate Desktop via ODBC

Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism

The CData ODBC Driver for Snowflake enables you to integrate Snowflake data into workflows built using Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

The CData ODBC Driver for Snowflake enables you to access live Snowflake data in workflow automation tools like Power Automate. This article shows how to integrate Snowflake data into a simple workflow, moving Snowflake data into a CSV file.

Through optimized data processing, CData ODBC Drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Snowflake data in Microsoft Power Automate. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power Automate to Snowflake, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Snowflake and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (e.g. SQL functions and JOIN operations).

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

Connect to Snowflake as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To connect to Snowflake:

Set User and Password to your Snowflake credentials and set the AuthScheme property to PASSWORD or OKTA.
Set URL to the URL of the Snowflake instance (i.e.: https://myaccount.snowflakecomputing.com).
Set Warehouse to the Snowflake warehouse.
(Optional) Set Account to your Snowflake account if your URL does not conform to the format above.
(Optional) Set Database and Schema to restrict the tables and views exposed.
(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.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing workflows.

Integrate Snowflake Data into Power Automate Workflows

After configuring the DSN for Snowflake, you are ready to integrate Snowflake data into your Power Automate workflows. Open Microsoft Power Automate, add a new flow, and name the flow.

👁 A new flow in Power Automate

In the flow editor, you can add the actions to connect to Snowflake, query Snowflake using SQL, and write the query results to a CSV document.

Add an Open SQL Connection Action

Add an "Open SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

Connection string: DSN=CData Snowflake Source

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Open SQL connection' action

Add an Execute SQL Statement Action

Add an "Execute SQL statement" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

Get connection by: SQL connection variable
SQL connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)
SQL statement: SELECT * FROM Products

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Execute SQL statement' action

Add a Write to CSV File Action

Add a "Write to CSV file" action (Actions -> File) and configure the properties.

Variable to write to: %QueryResult% (the variable from the "Execute SQL statement" action above)
File path: set to a file on disk
Configure Advanced settings as needed.

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Write to CSV file' action

Add a Close SQL Connection Action

Add a "Close SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

SQL Connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Close SQL connection' action

Save & Run the Flow

Once you have configured all the actions for the flow, click the disk icon to save the flow. Click the play icon to run the flow.

👁 A fully configured workflow

Now you have a workflow to move Snowflake data into a CSV file.

👁 Application data in a CSV file (Salesforce is shown)

With the CData ODBC Driver for Snowflake, you get live connectivity to Snowflake data within your Microsoft Power Automate workflows.

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/snowflake-odbc-power-automate.rst