Snowflake Data Sharing: Share Across Accounts Without Data Movement

➤ Use cases and benefits for collaboration

In today’s interconnected data landscape, sharing information across teams, departments, or even external organizations is essential. However, traditional data sharing methods often involve copying large datasets between systems, leading to increased costs, data inconsistencies, and security concerns.

Snowflake Data Sharing solves these challenges by allowing you to share live, secure access to your data across different accounts without physically moving or duplicating it. This means data can be accessed in real time, reducing storage costs and improving collaboration.

In this blog, we’ll explore how Snowflake’s data sharing works, its use cases, and the key benefits that make it an industry-leading solution.

✅ What is Snowflake Data Sharing?

Snowflake Data Sharing enables you to share databases, schemas, or specific tables with other Snowflake accounts — instantly and securely. The shared data remains in your account’s storage, while the recipient accesses it live through their Snowflake interface.

Unlike traditional data replication or ETL pipelines, Snowflake Data Sharing eliminates the need to copy data or build complex transfer processes.

How It Works:

You create a share object containing the data you want to share.
The recipient is granted access to the share.
The recipient queries the shared data in real time without importing or moving it.

All of this is handled with Snowflake’s built-in permissions and governance features.

✅ Use Cases for Snowflake Data Sharing

1️⃣ Cross-Department Collaboration

Marketing, finance, sales, and analytics teams can work with the same datasets without creating separate copies. Changes made in the source are instantly available, ensuring consistency and reducing duplication.

2️⃣ Partner Data Exchange

Companies can securely share customer, transaction, or inventory data with external partners, vendors, or suppliers without setting up FTP servers or exposing sensitive files.

3️⃣ Data Monetization

Organizations can offer curated datasets to external clients or stakeholders while maintaining control over what is shared and ensuring data privacy.

4️⃣ Multi-Region Operations

Enterprises operating in multiple regions or subsidiaries can centralize data storage while enabling access across different accounts without data duplication or synchronization delays.

5️⃣ Real-Time Analytics

Data-driven teams can build dashboards or reports on live datasets without waiting for data replication, enabling faster decision-making.

✅ Key Benefits of Snowflake Data Sharing

✅ No Data Movement

Since data isn’t copied, you save on storage costs and reduce the complexity of maintaining multiple datasets.

✅ Real-Time Access

Recipients access the most current version of the data, ensuring up-to-date reporting and analysis.

✅ Secure and Controlled

Permissions can be tightly managed, ensuring that only authorized users access the shared data. Encryption, auditing, and governance are built into the platform.

✅ Seamless Integration

Data sharing works across Snowflake accounts, regions, and even different cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), providing flexibility for global organizations.

✅ Cost-Efficient

You only pay for the storage in the provider’s account, and compute usage is billed on the consumer’s side, allowing each party to optimize costs based on their workload.

✅ How to Get Started

Create a Share
Define the datasets to share, set permissions, and create the share object.
Grant Access
Provide access to other Snowflake accounts by sharing the account locator or name.
Consume Shared Data
The recipient creates a database from the share and queries it as if it were local.

Example command to create a share:

CREATE SHARE my_share;
GRANT USAGE ON DATABASE sales_db TO SHARE my_share;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA sales_db.public TO SHARE my_share;

📌 Final Thoughts

Snowflake Data Sharing transforms the way organizations collaborate on data. By providing secure, real-time access to datasets without physical data movement, it empowers teams to work smarter, faster, and more cost-effectively.

Whether you’re sharing data internally across departments or externally with partners, this feature ensures data consistency, privacy, and governance — all while simplifying your architecture.

Start leveraging Snowflake’s data sharing today and unlock new opportunities for collaboration and innovation!

Hinzinfotech