We loved our trip to the Snowflake Summit in Las Vegas. Look through for some of our favorite moments and lessons from the conference!
Big News!
Snowflake announced major moves along two themes this year: disrupting app development, and expanding the marketplace beyond just sharing data.
First is their addition of Snowpark for Python. Snowpark is the built-in ability to interact with Snowflake data directly with other coding languages. Java and Scala are already available, and Python is now in public preview. With all the new features coming to the Python functions, developers and data scientists will have a much easier time building data pipelines and Machine Learning workflows.
Our favorite: Streamlit
While only recently acquired, the plan is that Streamlit will enable easily building out user interfaces with Python code using data from Snowflake.
This will allow developers to easily and simply build applications for different teams to access and utilize data and models. Apps can be built and tested by end users simultaneously, meaning that iterations through different versions happens faster than ever.
Also exciting: the Native Data App Framework
This new framework will enable data apps to be built and shared on a marketplace for consumer to purchase and use, all with custom pricing. Think of it as Etsy for data apps – eventually you’ll be able to find a data app for almost any use case.
Unistore and Hybrid Tables
Snowflake has announced a new type of table that enables both transactional and analytical queries well. This will enable apps to create data in Snowflake, then immediately analyze it. Essentially, users will be able to skip the data pipeline.
The Goal: Your One-Stop Data Shop
All of this is to support Snowflake’s move to be more than just a data warehouse. The combination of the above three innovations will allow developers to build data applications in Python, Java or Scala, allow them to be used and tested simultaneously as they’re developed, and finally sell them directly on a new marketplace for data applications. Snowflake is looking to connect the data end-user direct to the warehouse, in a user-friendly way, without extensive and costly pipeline applications.
We loved every minute of Snowflake Summit! Sad you missed it? Snowflake Summit will be in Las Vegas again next year, June 26-29, with registration opening fall of 2022.