In order to access all the features of Snowflake that I would like to discuss, I am going to purchase an Enterprise plan.  At the time of this writing, the cost is $3.00 per credit.  I do not plan to do anything outrageously expensive, but just in case, I will configure my system to warn me if things get pricey.

Let’s navigate to this page here on Snowflake’s site.  Please note that they are recommending a cloud storage of AWS (Amazon Web Services) in Northern Virginia.  Click on the “Get Started” link and sign up for your free trial.  Note:  I’ll be putting in a credit card to make sure it renews appropriately.  Quick note:  The sign-up form does not seem to play well with Firefox, so I used Chrome.  Be sure that when you choose your cloud provider in the sign-up, you choose Amazon Web Services — US East (Northern Virginia.)

After you have checked all the options, Snowflake will send you a link to your sign up email asking you to activate your account.  You will need to click the button (or the link in the email — either is fine) and go to Snowflake.  Firefox seems to work fine here.  You will be asked to create a username and a password.

After you have created a username and a strong password, you will be asked if you would like to load data for TastyBites, a fictional global food truck business.  I said “Yes” to this — the exercises are not very long, and they give a good overview of how to query and import data through Snowflake.

And yes — that is all there is to it.  In our next few posts, we will take a quick tour of Snowflake, and will try out a few USE commands to show us around.  But first, we will configure a Resource Monitor so that we don’t accidentally overspend!

I do assume a bit of familiarity with SQL.  I hope that’s okay.

PS  One final note — you will get an email from Snowflake with your account information.  Don’t lose that — it is how you log in.