November 12, 2024 — Additional CREATE OR ALTER commands — Preview¶

With this release, we are pleased to announce the preview of additional CREATE OR ALTER commands. These commands combine the functionality of the CREATE command and the ALTER command. A CREATE OR ALTER statement executes as a CREATE statement if the object doesn’t exist. If it does exist, it transforms the object according to the object definition in the statement.

CREATE OR ALTER TABLE provides a declarative and idempotent approach to defining your Snowflake objects. When used together with the Git integration, this enables an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach to database change management.

With this preview, the following additional objects are supported:

• CREATE OR ALTER APPLICATION ROLE: Creates an application role if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing application role.

• CREATE OR ALTER DATABASE: Creates a database if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing database.

• CREATE OR ALTER DATABASE ROLE: Creates a database role if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing database role.

• CREATE OR ALTER ROLE: Creates a role if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing role.

• CREATE OR ALTER SCHEMA: Creates a schema if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing schema.

• CREATE OR ALTER STAGE: Creates a stage if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing stage.

• CREATE OR ALTER VIEW: Creates a view if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing view.

• CREATE OR ALTER WAREHOUSE: Creates a warehouse if it doesn’t exist or alters an existing warehouse.

For more information, see CREATE OR ALTER <object>.