Snowflake Release Updates - 09/20

Hello Everyone!

Welcome back to this week's newsletter and summary of the Snowflake release updates. This edition also brings the learning opportunities and shares some of the references to continue learning!!

Snowflake Release Updates:

1. Snowflake new AWS region is now generally available - China (Ningxia)
2. Snowflake announced delta table support in preview where users can create read-only Iceberg tables from Delta table files in object storage.
3. SHOW command can now support WITH PRIVILEGES parameter for SHOW DATABASES, SHOW SCHEMAS, and SHOW WAREHOUSES.
4. Have you ever imagined a stored procedure being used in FROM clause of a SELECT statement. This can be used same as function that returns tabular result. Instead of using CALL statement use it with TABLE (stored procedure) in FROM clause.
5. Addition of DYNAMIC_TABLE_REFRESH_HISTORY view in USAGE schema to provide table refresh history upto 1 year
6. Snowflake serverless tasks can now have Python and JVMsupport for serverless tasks.
7. Loading encrypted parquet files can be implemented using USE_VECTORIZED_SCANNER option while loading parquet files to load client side encrypted files.
8. Snowflake announced AI21’s model, jamba-1.5-mini, is available for serverless inference in Snowflake Cortex AI.
9. Snowflake data clean rooms now have new features and enhancements with integration with Yahoo DSP and Google PAIR and DV 360.
10. Addition of a new LLM function to Cortex LLM functions - CLASSIFY_TEXT(). This can be used to label the text records easily, quickly, and accurately.
11. Text embedding function of Cortex LLM can now support - voyage-multilingual-2 multilingual model.

Snowflake learning references:

Its tough to maintain the pace of learning with Snowflake's new features and releases. To learn all new features of Snowflake and keep yourself updated, follow my blog series as well as newsletter editions to get references to learn something new every week:

1. Snowflake Data Clean Rooms : https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/cleanrooms/introduction learn what are clean rooms, why its easy to use and integrate
2. SQL reference to use SELECT FROM clause for a stored proceudure - https://docs.snowflake.com/en/developer-guide/stored-procedure/stored-procedures-selecting-from
3. Read and learn more about Snowflake Cortex LLM functions and usage - https://medium.com/@poojakelgaonkar

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you."