Backups: Transient tables are no longer supported (Pending)

Attention

This behavior change is in the 2026_06 bundle.

For the current status of the bundle, refer to Bundle history.

Snowflake Backups are intended for long-term data protection and recovery. Transient tables are designed for transitory data that needs to be maintained beyond each session, but that doesn’t require the same level of data protection and recovery that permanent tables provide. For this reason, Snowflake Backups no longer support transient tables, including dynamic transient tables.

Before the change:

You could create a backup set for a transient table, and transient tables were included when you backed up a database or schema that contained them. When you restored the backup, Snowflake recreated the tables as transient tables.

After the change:

Transient tables, including dynamic transient tables, are no longer supported in backups:

  • CREATE BACKUP SET for a transient table fails with the following error:

    511810: Backup set can not be created on table <name> as it is a transient table.

  • ALTER BACKUP SET … ADD BACKUP fails with the same error when the backup set targets a transient table, including backup sets that were created before this change.

  • When you add a backup to a backup set for a database or schema that contains transient tables, the operation succeeds, but Snowflake silently skips the transient tables. They aren’t part of the backup and don’t appear when you restore it.

Restoring existing backups isn’t affected. Any backup that already captured a transient table still restores that table normally. This change affects only new backups, never the restore of existing ones.

To keep restorable backups of data in a transient table, copy the data into a permanent table (for example, with CREATE TABLE … AS SELECT) and back up the permanent table.

Ref: 2360