May 2022¶
The following new features, behavior changes, and updates (enhancements, fixes, etc.) have been introduced this month. If you have any questions about these additions, please contact Snowflake Support.
Important
Each release may include updates that require the web interface to be refreshed.
As a general practice, to ensure these updates do not impact your usage, we recommend refreshing the web interface after each Snowflake release has been deployed.
New Features¶
Snowflake Scripting — General Availability¶
With this release, we are pleased to announce the general availability of Snowflake Scripting.
Snowflake Scripting is an extension to Snowflake SQL that adds support for procedural logic. You can use Snowflake Scripting to write stored procedures in SQL.
For more information, see Snowflake Scripting Developer Guide.
Snowpark API for Java — General Availability¶
With this release, we are pleased to announce the general availability of the Snowpark API for Java on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The Snowpark API for Java is available for preview on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Snowpark is a new developer experience that provides an intuitive API for querying and processing data in a data pipeline. Using this library, you can build applications that process data in Snowflake without moving data to the system where your application code runs.
For more information, see Snowpark API.
Snowpark API for Scala — General Availability on Azure¶
With this release, we are pleased to announce the general availability of the Snowpark API for Scala to Snowflake accounts hosted on Azure. The feature was previously only generally available to accounts hosted on AWS. It is still available in preview to accounts hosted on GCP.
For more information, see Snowpark Developer Guide for Scala.
Java UDFs — General Availability on Azure¶
With this release, we are pleased to announce the general availability of support for Java UDFs (user-defined functions), including UDTFs, to Snowflake accounts hosted on Azure. The feature was previously only generally available to accounts hosted on AWS. It is still available in preview to accounts hosted on GCP.
For more information, see Introduction to Java UDFs.
Security Updates¶
Self-Service Support for AWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link Setup¶
With this release, we are pleased to announce self-service support to authorize and revoke private connectivity to the Snowflake service for Snowflake accounts on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. This update removes the need to contact Snowflake Support during the initial enablement of AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link for your Snowflake account and, if it is necessary, to disable AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link for your Snowflake account.
The self-service support is managed through a set of new system functions. For details, see New SQL Functions (in this topic).
For details, see:
Note that self-service support for Google Cloud Private Service Connect is planned for a future release.
SQL Updates¶
New SQL Functions¶
The following function(s) were introduced in recent releases:
Function Category |
New Function |
Description |
|---|---|---|
Aggregate Functions (Counting Distinct Values) |
Returns an array that contains all of the distinct values from the specified column. |
|
Aggregate Functions (Counting Distinct Values) |
Returns an array that contains all of the distinct values (the union of distinct values) from the input arrays. |
|
System (Control) |
Enables private connectivity to the Snowflake service for the current account. |
|
System (Control) |
Disables private connectivity to the Snowflake service for the current account. |
|
System (Information) |
Verifies whether your current account is authorized for private connectivity to the Snowflake service. |
|
System (Information) |
Returns a list of the authorized endpoints for your current account to use with private connectivity to the Snowflake service. |
|
String & Binary Functions (Matching/Comparison) |
Computes the Jaro-Winkler similarity (link removed) between two input strings. (This was introduced in the 6.8 release.) |
|
String Functions (Regular Expressions) |
REGEXP_SUBSTR_ALL (Alias: REGEXP_EXTRACT_ALL) |
Returns an ARRAY that contains all substrings that match a regular expression within a string. (This was introduced in the 6.12 release.) |
Virtual Warehouse Updates¶
Query Acceleration Service — Preview¶
With this release, Snowflake introduces a preview of Query Acceleration Service.
The query acceleration service can accelerate parts of the query workload in a warehouse by offloading portions of the query processing to dynamic compute resources provided by the service. It can improve overall warehouse performance by reducing the impact of outlier queries, which are queries that use more resources than the typical query.
This feature is available on request to Snowflake accounts on Enterprise Edition (or higher) in the following regions:
AWS - US West (Oregon)
AWS - US East (N. Virginia)
AZURE - East US 2 (Virginia)
Data Pipeline Updates¶
Tasks: Error Notifications for Snowflake Accounts on Amazon Web Services — Preview¶
With this release, we are pleased to announce a preview of error notifications for tasks. When tasks encounter errors while during a run, this feature triggers a notification that describes the errors using cloud messaging, enabling further analysis of the SQL code in the task definition.
Note
Currently, this feature is limited to Snowflake accounts hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Snowflake can only push error notifications to Amazon Simple Notification Service.
Support for Snowflake accounts hosted on Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure and respective cloud messaging services is planned.
Preview features are intended for evaluation and testing purposes, and are not recommended for use in production.