Snowflake 简明教程

Snowflake - Introduction

Snowflake 是基于云的先进数据平台系统，以软件即服务 (SaaS) 的形式提供。Snowflake 提供来自 AWS S3、Azure、Google Cloud 的数据存储功能，处理复杂查询和不同的分析解决方案。由 Snowflake 提供的分析解决方案比传统数据库及其分析功能更快、更易于使用和更灵活。Snowflake 存储并提供接近实时的（非实际实时）数据。

Snowflake is a cloud-based advanced data platform system, provided as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Snowflake provides features of data storage from AWS S3, Azure, Google Cloud, processing complex queries and different analytic solutions. The analytic solutions provided by Snowflake are faster, easy to use and more flexible than traditional databases and their analytics features. Snowflake stores and provide data near time not in actual real time.

Snowflake 是一款先进的 OLAP（在线分析处理）技术解决方案。OLAP 也称为使用历史数据进行在线数据检索和数据分析的系统。它处理复杂且汇总的查询以及少量交易。例如：获取过去一个月内公司的订单数、销售额，获取该公司过去一个季度内新用户列表等。Snowflake 不用作 OLTP（在线事务处理）数据库。OLTP 数据库通常包含实时数据和大量的较小数据事务。例如：插入客户订单详细信息，注册新客户，跟踪订单配送状态等。

Snowflake is advanced solution for OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) technology. OLAP is also known as online data retrieving and data analysis system using historical data. It processes complex and aggregated queries with low number of transactions. For Ex: Getting number of orders, sales amount in last month for a company, number of new users list in the company in last quarter etc. Snowflake is not used as OLTP (Online Transactional Processing) database. OLTP database usually contains real time data with a high volume of small data transactions. For Ex: Inserting customer’s order detail, register a new customer, tracking order delivery status etc.

Why Use Snowflake?

Snowflake 提供称为云服务的数据平台。

Snowflake provides Data Platform as a Cloud Service.

  1. There is no hardware neither virtual nor physical to select, install, configure or manage from client side.

  2. There is no software to install, configure or manage to access it.

  3. All ongoing maintenance, management, upgrades and patching are owned by Snowflake itself.

用于分析解决方案的传统数据库在架构上复杂、昂贵且受制约，而 Snowflake 在数据工程、数据湖概念、数据仓库、数据科学、数据应用和数据交换或共享概念上非常丰富。它很容易访问和使用，不受数据大小和存储容量的限制。用户只需要管理其自身数据即可；所有与数据平台相关的管理均由 Snowflake 自身完成。

Traditional databases for analytics solutions are complex in architecture, costly and constrained while Snowflake is rich in concept of Data Engineering, Data Lake concept, data warehouse, Data Science, Data Application and Data Exchange or sharing. It is easy to access and use without having constraint of data size and storage capacity. User must administrate only their data; all data platform related administrations are done by Snowflake itself.

除此之外，Snowflake 还具有以下功能：

Apart of these, Snowflake also has the following features −

  1. Simple, reliable data pipelines in multi languages like Java, Python, PHP, Spark, Ruby etc.

  2. Secured access, very good performance and security of data lake.

  3. Zero administration for tool, data storage and data size.

  4. Simple data preparation for modeling with any framework.

  5. No operation burden to build data intensive applications.

  6. Share and collaborate live data across company’s ecosystem.