Connect Soda to Snowflake

Last modified on 18-Jun-25

For Soda to run quality scans on your data, you must configure it to connect to your data source.
To learn how to set up Soda and configure it to connect to your data sources, see Get started.

Configuration
Private key authentication
Use a values file to store private key authenticaion values
Test the data source connection
Supported data types
Troubleshoot

Connection configuration reference

Install package: soda-snowflake

data_source my_datasource_name:
  type: snowflake
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  username: ${SNOWFLAKE_USER}
  password: ${SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD}
  account: ${SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT}
  database: soda
  warehouse: soda_wh
  connection_timeout: 240
  role: PUBLIC
  client_session_keep_alive: true
  authenticator: externalbrowser
  session_params:
    QUERY_TAG: soda-queries
    QUOTED_IDENTIFIERS_IGNORE_CASE: false
  schema: public

Property	Required	Notes
type	required	Identify the type of data source for Soda.
host	optional	Provide host at which to connect to the data source.
port	optional	Provide the port through which to connect to the data source.
username	required	Consider using system variables to retrieve this value securely using, for example, `${SNOWFLAKE_USER}`.
password	required	Consider using system variables to retrieve this value securely using, for example, `${SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD}`.
account	required	Provide the unique value that identifies your account. Consider using system variables to retrieve this value securely using, for example, `${SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT}`. Note: Account sometimes needs to take the form of `<account_identifier>-<account_name>` or `<account_identifier>.<region>`.
database	required	Provide an idenfier for your database.
warehouse	required	Provide an identifier for the cluster of resources that is a Snowflake virtual warehouse. See Overview of Warehouses.
connection_timeout	required	Set the timeout period in seconds for an inactive login session.
role¹	optional	Specify a Snowflake role that has permission to access the `database` and `schema` of your data source.
client_session_keep_alive	optional	Use this parameter to keep the session active, even with no user activity. Provide a boolean value: `true` or `false`
authenticator²	optional	Add an authenticator paramater with value `externalbrowser` to authenticate the connection to your Snowflake data source using any SAML 2.0-compliant identity provider (IdP) such as Okta or OneLogin.
other params	optional	You can pass any other Snowflake paramters you wish by adding the key:value pairs to your Snowflake connection configuration. See Snowflake Python Connector API documentation for a list of passable parameters.
QUERY_TAG	optional	See QUERY_TAG in Snowflake documentation.
QUOTED_IDENTIFIERS_ IGNORE_CASE	optional	See QUOTED_IDENTIFIERS_IGNORE_CASE in Snowflake documentation.
schema	required	Identify the schema in the data source in which your tables exist.

¹ Though optional, best practice dictates that you provide a value for role. If you do not provide a role, and Snowflake has not assigned a Snowflake System-Defined Role to the user account, Snowflake may, confusingly, deny access to the data source.

² Use this parameter when adding Snowflake connection configurations to a configuration.yml file. However, if you are adding connection configuration details directly in Soda Cloud (connecting to your Snowflake data source via a Soda Agent) to authenticate using Okta, you must follow the instructions documented by Snowflake for Native SSO - Okta Only.

Private key authentication

You can use the private_key and private_key_passphrase parameters to specify for key pair authentication. In you configuration YML file, add the parameters as per the following example.

data_source snowflake:
  type: snowflake
  username: xxxyyyzzz
  ...
  client_session_keep_alive: true
  Authenticator: SNOWFLAKE_JWT
  schema: TPCH_SF1
  private_key_passphrase: "123xxx"
  private_key: |
    -----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----
    -----END ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----

Use a values file to store private key authentication values

If you use a private key authentication with Snowflake and have deployed a Soda Agent, you can provide the required private key values in a values.yml file when you deploy or redeploy the agent.

You can also use the values.yml file to store other environment variables for the Soda Agent to use, such as SNOFLAKE_USER, SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT, SNOWFLAKE_PASSPHRASE, etc.

First, run the following command to create a local path to the Snowflake private key. Replace the local path to the Snowflake private key with your own value.

kubectl create secret generic -n <soda-agent-namespace> snowflake-private-key --from-file=snowflake-private-key.pk8=<local path to the Snowflake private key>

Then, add the following to the your values.yml file, adjusting the values to your own specific details.

 soda:
   scanlauncher:
     volumeMounts:
       - name: snowflake-private-key
         mountPath: /opt/soda/etc
     volumes:
       - name: snowflake-private-key
         secret:
           secretName: snowflake-private-key
           items:
             - key: snowflake-private-key.pk8
               path: snowflake-private-key.pk8

Adjust the configuration.yml file to include the new path in the connection details, as in the following example.

 data_source ltsnowflakecustomer:
   type: snowflake
   username: ${SNOWFLAKE_USER}
   password: password
   account: ${SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT}
   database: PUBLISH_DEV
   warehouse: ${SNOWFLAKE_WAREHOUSE}
   role: ${SNOWFLAKE_ROLE}
   client_session_keep_alive: true
   session_parameters:
     QUERY_TAG: soda-queries
     QUOTED_IDENTIFIERS_IGNORE_CASE: false
   schema: CUSTOMER
   private_key_passphrase: ${SNOWFLAKE_PASSPHRASE}
   private_key_path: /opt/soda/etc/snowflake-private-key.pk8

Deploy, or redeploy, the agent for the changes to take effect.

Test the data source connection

To confirm that you have correctly configured the connection details for the data source(s) in your configuration YAML file, use the test-connection command. If you wish, add a -V option to the command to returns results in verbose mode in the CLI.

soda test-connection -d my_datasource -c configuration.yml -V

Supported data types

Category	Data type
text	CHAR, VARCHAR, CHARACTER, STRING, TEXT
number	NUMBER, INT, INTEGER, BIGINT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, BYTEINT, FLOAT, FLOAT4, FLOAT8, DOUBLE, DOUBLE PRECISION, REAL
time	DATE, DATETIME, TIME, TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMPT_LTZ, TIMESTAMP_NTZ, TIMESTAMP_TZ

Troubleshoot

Problem: When testing the connection to your Snowflake data source, Snowflake returns an error message about using the use database command.

Solution: Use the role parameter to specify a Snowflake role that has permission to access the database and schema of your data source.
Though optional, best practice dictates that you provide a value for role. If you do not provide a role, and Snowflake has not assigned a Snowflake System-Defined Role to the user account, Snowflake may, confusingly, deny access to the data source.

Problem: When Soda attempts to connect to your Snowflake data source, it produces a connectivity error that includes something like RunteimError: Command failed with exit code 2: ..... ocsp_response_validation_cash.lock.

Solution: Use Snowflake’s troubleshooting guide to triage OCSP-related connectivity issues.

Problem: You have defined a Group By check and the scan that executes the check yields an error.

Solution: Be aware that, by default, Snowflake returns columns names in uppercase. Therefore, when defining a Group By check, you must specify the custom name of the check in uppercase as in the following example.

checks for VOLUME:
  - group by:
      group_limit: 50
      query: |
        SELECT TRADER, count(*) as trader_row_count
        FROM TRADEVOLUME
        WHERE TRADE_DATE = '2023-01-01'
        GROUP BY TRADER
      fields:
        - TRADER
      checks:
        - TRADER_ROW_COUNT > 40:
            name: Trader row count

Problem: While attempting to connect Soda to a Snowflake data source using proxy parameters, you encounter an error that reads something similar to Could not connect to data source "name_db": 250001 (08001): Failed to connect to DB: mydb.eu-west-1.snowflakecomputing.com:443. Incoming request with IP/Token xx.xxx.xx.xxx is not allowed to access Snowflake.

data_source: my_data_source
  type: snowflake
  ...
  session_param:
    QUERY_TAG: soda-test
    QUOTED_IDENTIFIERS_IGNORE_CASE: false
  proxy_http: http://a-proxy-o-dd-dddd-net:8000
  proxy_https: https://a-proxy-o-dd-dddd-net:8000

Solution: When connecting to a Snowflake data source by proxyy, be sure to set the new proxy environment variables from the command-line using export statements, as in the following example.

export HTTP_PROXY=http://a-proxy-o-dd-dddd-net:8000
export HTTPS_PROXY=https://a-proxy-o-dd-dddd-net:8000

Was this documentation helpful?

What could we do to improve this page?

Suggest a docs change in GitHub.
Share feedback in the Soda community on Slack.

Documentation always applies to the latest version of Soda products
Last modified on 18-Jun-25