How to Follow Snowflake Best Practices

What are the essential Snowflake best practices?

Actionable rules that keep Snowflake workloads fast, affordable, and secure.

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Description

Why focus on Snowflake best practices?

Following published guidelines avoids slow queries, runaway costs, and security gaps. The payoff is predictable performance, smaller invoices, and peace of mind.

How to size virtual warehouses?

Start Small (X-Small or Small) and auto-suspend after 60 s. Scale up only when concurrency or scan time requires it.Monitor credits used via ACCOUNT_USAGE views.

Example sizing query

create or replace warehouse wh_reporting with warehouse_size = 'SMALL' auto_suspend = 60 auto_resume = true;

When should I enable multi-cluster?

Turn on multi-cluster only for high-concurrency dashboards. Set MIN_CLUSTER_SIZE=1 and MAX_CLUSTER_SIZE to the lowest number that eliminates queueing.

How do clustering keys speed up queries?

Define CLUSTER BY columns used in large table filters.For Orders, clustering on (customer_id, order_date) reduces micro-partitions scanned in customer-centric reports.

Clustering example

create or replace table Orders ( id number, customer_id number, order_date date, total_amount number, cluster by (customer_id, order_date) );

What are result-, metadata-, and data-caches?

Result cache is free and lasts 24 h; reuse it with identical SQL and role.Metadata and data caches live in warehouse memory; keep them warm by avoiding unnecessary resumes.

How to control storage costs?

Stage data with compression (GZIP/Parquet), partition large files, and drop transient tables once queries finish. Schedule automatic RETENTION_TIME trims for historical tables.

Storage trim example

alter table OrderItems set data_retention_time_in_days = 7;

How to secure data quickly?

Use role hierarchy: ACCOUNTADMIN → SECURITYADMIN → custom roles. Mask PII columns (Customers.email) with dynamic data masking policies. Enforce network policies to whitelist corporate IPs.

Why How to Follow Snowflake Best Practices is important

How to Follow Snowflake Best Practices Example Usage


-- Daily sales total by customer with prune-friendly filters
SELECT   c.name,
         SUM(o.total_amount) AS lifetime_spend
FROM     Customers c
JOIN     Orders    o ON o.customer_id = c.id
WHERE    o.order_date >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '30 days'
GROUP BY c.name
ORDER BY lifetime_spend DESC;

How to Follow Snowflake Best Practices Syntax


-- Warehouse sizing
CREATE WAREHOUSE warehouse_name
  [WITH] [WAREHOUSE_SIZE = {XSMALL | SMALL | MEDIUM | LARGE | XLARGE | XXLARGE}]
  [AUTO_SUSPEND = seconds]
  [AUTO_RESUME = {TRUE | FALSE}]
  [MIN_CLUSTER_COUNT = n] [MAX_CLUSTER_COUNT = n];

-- Clustering large tables
CREATE TABLE table_name (
  ...columns...
) CLUSTER BY (column1, column2);

-- Data retention for cost control
ALTER TABLE table_name SET DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS = n;

Common Mistakes

Oversizing warehouses: Users start with XLARGE to "be safe," burning credits. Fix by beginning at XSMALL, monitoring STATEMENT_QUEUED_TIME, and scaling only when needed.
Ignoring micro-partition pruning: Tables without clustering scan all partitions. Fix by adding CLUSTER BY on frequently filtered columns and reclustering large historical tables.