Snowflake

There are two ways to bring Snowflake into oleander. A connection attaches your Snowflake account so its tables are queryable from the lake. Snowflake Horizon registers Snowflake’s Iceberg catalog so your Iceberg tables are available to every engine, including Spark and Polars. Both are managed in Settings → Lake.

Connection

Authentication uses key-pair signing. No passwords are stored.

Setup

Open Settings → Lake and find Snowflake connections.
Fill in the required fields:

Field	Description
Name	A short identifier for this connection, e.g. `prod_sf`. This becomes the catalog prefix in SQL.
Account identifier	Your Snowflake account in `orgname-accountname` format
Username	The Snowflake user to authenticate as
Private key	RSA private key in PEM format. The user must have the matching public key registered in Snowflake.

Optionally set a default warehouse, database, and role to scope queries.

Generating a key pair

# Generate an RSA key pair
openssl genrsa -out snowflake_key.pem 2048
openssl rsa -in snowflake_key.pem -pubout -out snowflake_key.pub

-- Register the public key with your Snowflake user
ALTER USER my_user SET RSA_PUBLIC_KEY='<contents of snowflake_key.pub>';

Paste the contents of snowflake_key.pem into the Private key field. The key is stored encrypted.

Querying

Tables are reachable as connection_name.schema.table:

-- Query a Snowflake table
SELECT *
FROM prod_sf.public.orders
WHERE created_at >= '2024-01-01'
LIMIT 100;

-- Join Snowflake with your Iceberg lake
SELECT o.order_id, c.segment
FROM prod_sf.public.orders o
JOIN oleander.default.customers c ON o.customer_id = c.id;

A Snowflake connection table selects DuckDB. DuckDB is the only engine that attaches external connections, so the query router routes any query naming a connection table here before it considers input size - leave engine on auto. Asking for Bloom, Polars, or Spark on one of these queries returns an engine capability error rather than rerouting silently.A Horizon catalog is different: it is a real Iceberg catalog, so DuckDB and Spark can both read it.

Snowflake Horizon

Snowflake Horizon is Snowflake’s built-in Iceberg catalog, powered by Polaris. Registering it gives you full Iceberg REST catalog access against your Snowflake-managed Iceberg tables - DuckDB queries, Polars workloads, and Spark jobs alike. Unlike a connection, a Horizon catalog is a real Iceberg catalog, so it is not limited to DuckDB.

Setup

Open Settings → Lake and find External catalogs.
Select Snowflake Horizon as the catalog type.
Fill in the required fields:

Field	Description
Name	A short catalog name, e.g. `sf_horizon`
Catalog URI	Your Snowflake account URL, e.g. `https://orgname-accountname.snowflakecomputing.com`
Database	The Snowflake database to expose as an Iceberg catalog
Role	The Snowflake role used to access the catalog
Cloud provider	`aws`, `gcp`, or `azure`
Region	The cloud region your Snowflake account is in

Choose an authentication method:

Personal Access Token (PAT)
Key-pair

Generate a PAT in Snowflake and paste it into the Secret field. This is the simplest option.

-- Generate a PAT in Snowflake
ALTER USER my_user ADD PROGRAMMATIC ACCESS TOKEN my_pat;

Use an RSA key pair for authentication. Provide:

Field	Description
Username	The Snowflake user
Private key	RSA private key in PEM format
Passphrase	Passphrase for the private key, if encrypted

The same key pair used for a Snowflake connection can be reused here.

Querying

Once registered, the catalog is available under its name everywhere:

-- DuckDB: query a Snowflake Horizon Iceberg table
SELECT species, COUNT(*) AS n
FROM sf_horizon.default.flowers
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY n DESC;

# Polars script mode
flowers = scan("sf_horizon.default.flowers")
result = flowers.group_by("species").agg(pl.len().alias("count"))

Credential vending is handled automatically via the Iceberg REST protocol. No S3 or GCS credentials need to be configured manually.

A catalog other than oleander routes to DuckDB or Spark - Bloom mounts only oleander. See Catalogs for how registered catalogs behave across the platform.

Getting Started

Platform

Connections

Coding with agents

CLI

External Compute

Connection

Setup

Generating a key pair

Querying

Snowflake Horizon

Setup

Querying

​Connection

​Setup

​Generating a key pair

​Querying

​Snowflake Horizon

​Setup

​Querying

Connection

Setup

Generating a key pair

Querying

Snowflake Horizon

Setup

Querying