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Manage Snowflake tags

Note that object tagging in Snowflake currently requires Enterprise Edition or higher.

Atlan enables you to import your Snowflake tags, update your Snowflake assets with the imported tags, and push the tag updates back to Snowflake:

  • Import tags - crawl Snowflake tags from Snowflake to Atlan
  • Reverse sync - sync Snowflake tag updates from Atlan to Snowflake

Snowflake tag management in Atlan.png

Once you've imported your Snowflake tags to Atlan:

  • Your Snowflake assets in Atlan will be automatically enriched with their Snowflake tags.
  • Imported Snowflake tags will be mapped to corresponding Atlan tags through case-insensitive name match - multiple Snowflake tags can be matched to a single tag in Atlan.
  • You can also attach Snowflake tags, including tag values, to your Snowflake assets in Atlan - allowing you to categorize your assets at a more granular level. Atlan supports:
  • You can enable reverse sync to push any tag updates for your Snowflake assets back to Snowflake - including allowed and tag values added to assets in Atlan.
  • You can filter your assets by Snowflake tags and tag and allowed values.
Did you know?

Enabling reverse sync will only update existing tags in Snowflake. It will neither create nor delete any tags in Snowflake.

Prerequisites​

Did you know?

Additional privileges are only required when using the information schema method for fetching metadata. This is because Snowflake stores all tag objects in the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema. If you're using the account usage method to crawl metadata in Atlan or you have configured the Snowflake miner, any permissions required will already be set.

Account usage method​

Before you can import tags from Snowflake, you will need to do the following:

  • Create tags or have existing tags in Snowflake.
  • Grant the same permissions as required for crawling Snowflake assets to import tags and push updated tags to Snowflake.

Information schema method​

Before you can import tags from Snowflake, you will need to do the following:

Import Snowflake tags to Atlan​

Who can do this?

You will need to be an admin user in Atlan to import Snowflake tags to Atlan. You will also need to work with your Snowflake administrator to grant additional permissions to import tags from Snowflake - you may not have access yourself.

You can import your Snowflake tags to Atlan through one-way tag sync. The synced Snowflake tags will be matched to corresponding tags in Atlan through case-insensitive name match and your Snowflake assets will be enriched with their synced tags from Snowflake.

To import Snowflake tags to Atlan, you can either:

  • Create a new Snowflake workflow and configure the crawler to import tags.
  • Modify the crawler's configuration for an existing Snowflake workflow to change Import Tags to Yes. If you subsequently modify the workflow to disable tag import, for any tags already imported, Atlan will preserve those tags.

Once the crawler has completed running, tags imported from Snowflake will be available to use for tagging assets! 🎉

View Snowflake tags in Atlan​

Once you've imported your Snowflake tags, you will be able to view and manage your Snowflake tags in Atlan.

To view Snowflake tags:

  1. From the left menu of any screen, click Governance.
  2. Under the Governance heading of the _Governance cente_r, click Tags.
  3. (Optional) Under Tags, click the funnel icon to filter tags by source type. Click Snowflake to filter for tags imported from Snowflake.
  4. From the left menu under Tags, select a synced tag - synced tags will display the Snowflake ❄️ icon next to the tag name. 
  5. In the Overview section, you can view a total count of synced Snowflake tags. To the right of Overview, click Synced tags to view additional details - including tag name, description, tag values, total count of linked assets, connection, database, and schema names, and timestamp for last synced.
  6. (Optional) Click the Linked assets tab to view linked assets for your Snowflake tag.
  7. (Optional) In the top right, click the pencil icon to add a description and change the tag icon. You cannot rename tags synced from Snowflake.

Push tag updates to Snowflake​

Who can do this?

Any admin or member user in Atlan can configure reverse sync for tag updates to Snowflake. You will also need to work with your Snowflake administrator to grant additional permissions to push updates - you may not have access yourself.

Did you know?

Reverse sync is currently only available for imported Snowflake tags in Atlan. The imported tags will display a Snowflake ❄️ icon next to the tag name. If using the account usage method, expect a data latency of up to 3 hours for reverse tag sync to be successful.

You can enable reverse sync for your imported Snowflake tags in Atlan and push all tag updates for your Snowflake assets back to source. Once you have enabled reverse sync, any Snowflake assets with tags updated in Atlan will also be updated in Snowflake.

To enable reverse sync for imported Snowflake tags:

  1. From the left menu of any screen, click Governance.
  2. Under the Governance heading of the _Governance cente_r, click Tags.
  3. (Optional) Under Tags, click the funnel icon to filter tags by source type. Click Snowflake to filter for tags imported from Snowflake.
  4. In the left menu under Tags, select a synced Snowflake tag - synced tags will display the Snowflake ❄️ icon next to the tag name. 
  5. On your selected tag page, to the right of Overview, click Synced tags.
  6. Under Synced tags, in the upper right, turn on Enable reverse sync to synchronize tag updates from Atlan to Snowflake.
  7. In the corresponding confirmation dialog, click Yes, enable it to enable reverse tag sync or click Cancel.

Now when you attach Snowflake tags to your Snowflake assets in Atlan, these tag updates will also be pushed to Snowflake! 🎉

Did you know?

Enabling reverse sync will not trigger any updates in Snowflake until synced tags are attached to Snowflake assets in Atlan. For any questions about managing Snowflake tags, head over here.