October 23-24, 2023 — 7.38 Release Notes¶

Network rules support Azure private endpoints — Preview¶

With this release, Snowflake is pleased to announce that the preview of network rules has been expanded to include support for the identifiers of Azure private endpoints. Now, you can use network rules with network policies to restrict access to the Snowflake service when the request originates from an Azure private endpoint.

For details about using network rules with network policies, see Working with Network Rules.

ALTER TABLE: Support for IF [NOT] EXISTS with ADD COLUMN and DROP COLUMN¶

The ALTER TABLE command now supports the keywords IF NOT EXISTS with ADD COLUMN and IF EXISTS with DROP COLUMN:

• When adding a column, you can specify IF NOT EXISTS to add the column only if no column with that name exists.

  For example, the following statement adds a column named total only if no column with that name exists:

  ALTER TABLE my_table ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS total NUMBER;
  

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  If a total column already exists, the statement does not return an error, and the existing column is left unchanged.

• When dropping a column, you can specify IF EXISTS to drop the column only if a column with that name exists.

  For example, the following statement drops a column named total only if a column with that name exists:

  ALTER TABLE my_table DROP COLUMN IF EXISTS total;
  

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  If the total column does not exist, the statement does not return an error.

For details, see ALTER TABLE.

H3 functions for GEOGRAPHY objects — Preview¶

With this release, we are pleased to announce the preview of H3 functions for GEOGRAPHY objects. H3 (https://h3geo.org/docs/) is a hierarchical geospatial index (https://h3geo.org/docs/highlights/indexing/) that partitions the world into hexagonal cells in a discrete global grid system (link removed). Snowflake provides the SQL functions that enable you to use H3 with GEOGRAPHY objects in Snowflake.

For more information, see Using GEOGRAPHY objects with H3.

Python packages policies — Preview¶

With this release, we are pleased to announce support for Python packages policies as a preview feature to all accounts.

Using a packages policy enables you to set allowlists and blocklists for third-party Python packages from Anaconda at the account level. This lets you meet stricter auditing and security requirements and gives you more fine-grained control over which packages are available or blocked in your environment.

For more information, see Packages Policies.

Snowsight is the default interface for Snowflake accounts in US government regions¶

Starting November 6, 2023, all users in Snowflake accounts in US government regions see Snowsight after logging in.

Users in those accounts can no longer choose Classic Console as the default experience for their user profile. If needed, users can access Classic Console from Snowsight.

If you use private connectivity to access Snowflake and have not yet set up your private connectivity configuration to access Snowsight, you are not affected by this change. See Configuring private connectivity for Snowsight to prepare for upgrading to Snowsight.

For more information, see About the Snowsight upgrade.