Does Snowflake support JDBC data sources, and if so how? I'm using Netsuite Analytics as a datasource and would like to load that to a Snowflake warehouse. The examples I'm finding for SnowFlake are file readers, I realise I can convert my netsuite data to a file and then ingest that but I'd rather remove that additonal step.
2 Answers
Snowflake has both ODBC and JDBC drivers that you can use. However, if you are loading a lot of data from Netsuite Analytics, most of the Snowflake drivers will actually generate files, PUT them to S3, and execute a COPY INTO statement to get the data into Snowflake for you. While it is more seamless, it is still executing that "additional step". The reason is...that's the most efficient way to get data into Snowflake, and it's not even close.
3No, Snowflake doesn't offer tools for loading data from JDBC or ODBC data sources. This is because Snowflake is a database platform and the functionality you're describing is that of a data integration or ETL tool. There are plenty of third party tools available that can handle this such as Matillion or Talend. Snowflake has a list of recommended technology partners on their website.
If you don't have access to an ETL tool then, as you mentioned, you can create a process yourself to export data from Netsuite to files that are uploaded to cloud storage such AWS S3. You can then set up this storage area an "external stage" and use Snowflake's COPY statement to load the data into Snowflake.
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