prerequisites.md

SNOWFLAKE PREREQUISITES

You'll need a Snowflake account with a user created with ACCOUNTADMIN permissions. This user will be used to get things set up in Snowflake.

• It is strongly recommended to sign up for a free 30 day trial Snowflake account for this lab. Once you’ve registered, you’ll get an email that will bring you to Snowflake so that you can sign in.
• Make sure to Activate your account and pick a username and password that you will remember. This will be important for logging in later on.
• Anaconda Terms & Conditions accepted. See Getting Started section in Third-Party Packages.

GITHUB PREREQUISITES

Fork and Clone Repository for Quickstart

You’ll need to create a fork of the repository for this lab in your GitHub account, which if you are reading this file you've likely already done that. However, you can check for updates to the repository and lab by visiting phData’s Data Engineering Pipelines with Snowpark Python associated GitHub Repository and click on the Fork button near the top right. Complete any required fields and click Create Fork.

By default GitHub Actions disables any workflows (or CI/CD pipelines) defined in the forked repository. This repository contains a workflow to deploy your Snowpark Python UDF and stored procedures, which we’ll use later on. So for now enable this workflow by opening your forked repository in GitHub, clicking on the Actions tab near the top middle of the page, and then clicking on the I understand my workflows, go ahead and enable them green button.

GitHub Actions

In order for your GitHub Actions workflow to be able to connect to your Snowflake account you will need to store your Snowflake credentials in GitHub. Action Secrets in GitHub are used to securely store values/variables which will be used in your CI/CD pipelines. In this step, we will create secrets for each of the parameters.

• From the repository, click on the Settings tab near the top of the page. From the Settings page, click on the "Secrets and variables" then "Actions" tab in the left-hand navigation. The Actions secrets should be selected. For each secret listed below click on "New repository secret" near the top right and enter the name given below along with the appropriate value (adjusting as appropriate).

  Secret Name	Secret Value
  SNOWSQL_ACCOUNT	<myaccount>
  SNOWSQL_USER	<myusername>
  SNOWSQL_PWD	<mypassword>
  SNOWSQL_ROLE	HOL_ROLE
  SNOWSQL_WAREHOUSE	HOL_WH
  SNOWSQL_DATABASE	HOL_DB

• Notes:

  • To get the SNOWSQL_ACCOUNT, in the Snowflake console click on your account name in the lower left, hover over your account, then select Copy account URL.
  
  • The account is identifier.region.cloudprovider prior to .snowflakecomputing.com
  

Create a GitHub Codespace

Note: This development can be done on your desktop with VS Code, however Codespaces greatly simplifies the prerequisites and complexities of local development.

• If you’ve already created a Codespace, it can be launched and stopped from this window as well.

  

• Once the Codespace is launched, you will need to install python and Snowflake extensions

  

• Python extension installed. Search for and install the “Python” extension (from Microsoft) in the Extensions pane in the Codespace.

• Snowflake extension installed. Search for and install the “Snowflake” extension (from Snowflake) in the Extensions pane in the Codespace.

  • Select the Snowflake icon in the left pane of the Codespace to sign into snowflake extension using your snowflake URL then enter your username and password.
    • Note: to get the snowflake URL, just as you did for the GitHub secret step; in the Snowflake console click on your account name in the lower left, hover over your account, then select Copy account URL.

• Once you are signed into the Snowflake extension, open a new terminal

  

Create Snowflake Credentials File

In the Codespace terminal execute the following commands:

mkdir ~/.snowsql
touch ~/.snowsql/config

Now that we've created the file, we can open it in the codespace by navigating to it:

In the dialog that opens, type in the path to your config file:

/home/codespace/.snowsql/config

Add your account details to the config file for snowsql, which are the exact same values used for the Github secrets, be sure to save the file.

Note: we aren’t actually installing or using snowsql, just creating the credentials in the location that the snowpark_utils python file expects them to be, since we are just deploying code to Snowflake and not staging local data.

Create Snowsql Credentials File

[connections.dev]
accountname = <myaccount>
username = <myusername>
password = <mypassword>
rolename = HOL_ROLE
warehousename = HOL_WH
dbname = HOL_DB

Create Anaconda Environment and Test Connection

This lab will take place inside an Anaconda virtual environment running in the Codespace. You will create and activate an Anaconda environment for this lab using the supplied conda_env.yml file. Run these commands from a terminal in the root of your local forked repository.

conda env create -f conda_env.yml
conda init bash

You will need to close and reopen the terminal, then execute:

conda activate pysnowpark

Once activated you should see (pysnowpark) in front of the host name

Lastly, lets test that the connection is successful. To do this we'll run test_connection.py

python test_connection.py

If the connection test returns successful, you have completed all the prerequisites for the lab. If it returns an error message, reopen the credentials file that you created at the Create Snowflake Credentials File step and check the account is correctly formatted and the username and password are correct.

If you have successfully completed all the steps, congratulations you are ready for the Hands on Lab! If you completed these prerequisites prior to attending the Hands on Lab, you can stop the Codespace in Github where you launched it from, or it will automatically stop after 30 mintues