Meet our new book — Jumpstart Snowflake — A Step-by-Step Guide to Modern Cloud Analytics
By: D Ma
Tags: Software Development, Data Science, Cloud Computing, Technology, Software Engineering

“Don’t Shoot for Middle. Dare to think big. Disrupt. Revolutionize. Don’t be afraid to form a sweeping dream that inspires, not only others, but yourself as well. Incremental innovation will not lead to real change — it only improves something slightly. Look for breakthrough innovations, change that will make a difference.” Leonard Brody & David Raffa

In 2019 I had an idea, I have to write a book about Snowflake. Snowflake is so popular and I can leverage my experience with Cloud Data Warehouses, 10+ years of experience in BI/DW/BigData and book writing. I want to help people to quickly onboard with Cloud Data Platform Snowflake. Moreover, I want to help them get more context about the role of Snowflake in the typical organization as well as cover 3rd party tools, analytics, and data warehouse modernization use cases. Check this new book on Amazon or Apress.

First of all, I have to find the publisher. I have experience with Packt Publishing and I want to try something new. I consider Apress and O’Reilly the top publishers in the data analytics fields. So, I contacted both the book idea.

Hello, My name is Dmitry. I am Data Engineer. I used to write for PacktPub and delivered 4 books about Data tools and technology. However, I want to try with new publishers. I really like your books and idea behind the brand. Couple words about me: I have 10+ years of experience with Data Analytics. Moreover, I am passion about innovation and emerging technology. Often I am presenting at world conferences such as Enterprise Data World or Data Summit. My next book idea is about one of the most disruptive technology — Snowflake Computing. Let me know if you are interested and we can work through outline and schedule. Thank you!

I’ve got a response from Apress pretty fast and they liked the idea. O’Reilly reply that they aren’t interested. Then easier for me to proceed. However, several months later, O’Reilly came back and asked about the book. But we were in the middle of the book.

Then the next step is to define the list of chapters. The book has 14 chapters and it is 264 pages. It is a pretty small book for this big topic and we can’t go too deep in detail. But it should give a good overview of Snowflake’s unique features and advantages as well as the role in Modern Analytics.

By the end of writing, I had to find reviewer for the book. I was very lucky that one of the most respectful and knowledgeable data warriors accepts the offer to check our writing and gave us tons of valuable advice.

Moreover, Snowflake book could have one of 4 options for its cover:

Let’s check the summary of the chapter:

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Cloud Analytics — will cover some of the historical trends of the Data Warehouse world prior to Snowflake as well as the fundamentals of Cloud Analytics.

Key components of cloud

Chapter 2: Getting Started with Snowflake — will help to start with Snowflake. It will guide you on how to launch snowflakes and meet you with web interface and functionality. In addition, it will guide with a Snowflake pricing model and available options for Virtual Warehouse.

Snowflake Architecture

Chapter 3: Building a Virtual Warehouse — will introduce the key component on snowflake — Virtual Warehouse. The reader will learn how to work and monitor Virtual Warehouse.

— will introduce the key component on snowflake — Virtual Warehouse. The reader will learn how to work and monitor Virtual Warehouse. Chapter 4: Loading Bulk Data into Snowflake — will show how you can bulk load data into Snowflake using the COPY command.

— will show how you can bulk load data into Snowflake using the COPY command. Chapter 5: Getting Started with SnowSQL — will introduce the snowflake CLI tool. The reader will learn how to work with the CLI tool and what he can accomplish with it.

— will introduce the snowflake CLI tool. The reader will learn how to work with the CLI tool and what he can accomplish with it. Chapter 6: Continuous Data Loading with Snowpipe — will introduce another snowflake utility — Snowpipe. The reader will learn how to use Snowpipe and will create a data pipeline in order to loading data into Snowflake.

— will introduce another snowflake utility — Snowpipe. The reader will learn how to use Snowpipe and will create a data pipeline in order to loading data into Snowflake. Chapter 7: Snowflake Administration — will guide the reader to manage Snowflake Account.

Chapter 8: Snowflake Security Overview — will cover the fundamentals principles of the Snowflake security model and will guide the reader on how to set up security and access with the cluster.

Chapter 9: Working with Semistructured Data — will demonstrate to you how to work with popular semi-structured formats like JSON, XML, and AVRO. In addition, the user will learn about Binary data and how he may work with it at Snowflake.

— will demonstrate to you how to work with popular semi-structured formats like JSON, XML, and AVRO. In addition, the user will learn about Binary data and how he may work with it at Snowflake. Chapter 10: Secure Data Sharing — will cover Data Sharing use cases.

Snowflake Data Sharing

Chapter 11: Designing a Modern Analytics Solution with Snowflake — will help users to learn about the integration of Snowflake Cloud Data platform with Visual Analytics platform Tableau and Cloud Data Integration tool Matillion ETL.

A high-level overview of modern data platform

Chapter 12: Snowflake and Data Science — cover some of the most popular 3rd party tools and applications that are working with Snowflake and allow us to do Data Science and Machine Learning. Moreover, it has an example of integration with Azure Databricks (Spark).

Chapter 13: Migrating to Snowflake — is about migration scenarios and use cases as well as some typical architectures. Finally, it has a real-world project:

Chapter 14: Time Travel — is about Snowflake’s unique feature that allows us to enables accessing historical data (i.e. data that has been changed or deleted) at any point within a defined period. It serves as a powerful tool for performing the following tasks.

Time Travel

So, if you want to start with Cloud Data Platform and learn more about modern analytics and Snowflake, this is a great book to start and if you need any help with Snowflake Proof of Concept or implementation you may contact us.