You can establish a direct connection to Snowflake to pull in data into xP&A.

This article contains a description of the prerequisites and the individual steps of the set-up process.

The fields that are pulled in must be defined during the set-up process using a database query. For a detailed instruction on how to structure such a query, see Defining Database Queries.

Make sure the account you are using has permission to access the tables you wish to query.

Snowflake has the option of implementing a Network Policy in order to restrict access based on IP addresses.

If you are not using a Network Policy, your database is publicly accessible and no further actions are necessary.

If you have enabled a Network Policy, you have to whitelist the static IP address before connecting Snowflake with xP&A. Which IP address needs to be whitelisted depends on the region where your Lucanet instance is hosted:

RegionIP address to whitelist
eu-central-152.59.129.235
ap-southeast-113.214.111.217
us-east-13.223.155.63, 98.87.131.112, 44.219.125.183
eu-central-251.34.5.247
eu-north-113.51.154.160

The correct IP address(es) to whitelist matching your region is shown in the New Data Source dialog when you create the connection, so please check this information on the user interface.

To connect to Snowflake:

1

Choose one of the following options:

  • Open the Data workspace from the overview on the start page and click + New.
Shows the start page of Lucanet xP&A. Highlighted are the buttons that need to be used to create a new data source connection from the start page.
New data source connection from the Data workspace
  • Open the model into which you would like to integrate the data, click the + sign next to Data in the overview, and choose New data source:
Shows the view of a model. Highlighted are the buttons that need to be used to create a new data source connection from the model view.
New data source connection from within a model
2

In the Data sources dialog, open the BI/Database tab and choose Snowflake

Shows the Data Sources dialog. Highlighted in red is the 'BI/Database' tab.
'BI/Database' tab
3

The New Data Source dialog is displayed as follows:

Shows the 'New Data Source' dialog for a Snowflake connection
'New Data Source' dialog for Snowflake
4

Configure the steps as described in the following section.

5

Click Create data source.

The following steps are required to set up the data source:

1

Choose a connection

Choose an existing connection, or, if you have not configured a connection yet, click New Connection and enter the following in the New Snowflake connection dialog:

  • Snowflake account identifier in the format <org_name>-<account_name>. Please do not use your account name. For more information on Snowflake account IDs, see Account identifiers.
  • Snowflake user name
  • Name of the default warehouse you want to execute the queries with.

This can be changed by appending the `USE WAREHOUSE *;` statement before the actual query.

  • Authentication type to be used when connecting to Snowflake. Choose one of the following options:

    • Key pair: If you choose this option, copy the displayed key into your clipboard and execute this statement in Snowflake to associate xP&A's public key with the user you have configured.
    • Password: If you choose this option, enter the password of the user to be used when establishing a connection to Snowflake
Setting up a Snowflake connection
2

Complete the query form

Enter the following:

  • Data Source Name
  • Query to define the fields which are to be pulled in. For more information, see Defining Database Queries.
  • Name of the Date column, which must be one of Snowflake's date formats
  • Names of the columns that contain variables(which must have a numeric data type)

Any remaining columns will be treated as dimensions, and must have a string data type.

An exception is the cohort dimension, which must be a date, with the column header explicitly labelled Cohort.