Data analysts often comes across very large tables, especially when working with Snowflake. These tables might contain dozens of columns and billions of records. There are numerous database editing tools that can ease the management task by giving the developer quick access to the table’s schema (e.g., column lists, data types and more) and allowing data previews. The problem is that these tools, while useful, do not give the analyst / developer much insight into the nature of the data or the relationships within it.

In March of 2019, Snowflake announced its first acquisition. The company was a visual SQL UI company called Numeracy. Many of the features of this graphical UI have now been incorporated into the Snowflake product via a new interface named “Snowsight.” These new features can significantly speed up the process of data discovery through its intuitive, metadata-driven, and visually oriented features.

It is not hard to imagine an analyst or developer having to analyze a very large and new table. Most tools allow you to preview a couple of thousand rows which can give some idea about the nature of the data. But what about other questions such as how many blank values do I have in a column? How is the data spread across buckets? How can I quickly chart some of this data? This is why Snowsight exists.