Snowflake: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. Built-in Data Governance and Discovery

A Note for Early Release Readers

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This will be the 15th chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made active later on.

If you’d like to be actively involved in reviewing and commenting on this draft, please reach out to the editor at [e-mail].

Data governance provides the framework necessary to ensure data assets are known, protected, and accessible to users in the organization who need them to make informed data-driven decisions.  Fortunately, ensuring data is secure, trustworthy, and compliant with regulatory requirements is more easily achievable today.

Past data governance approaches were very different before modern data cloud platforms like Snowflake existed. Protecting sensitive data, for example, was frequently achieved simply by prohibiting access to the entire table which included any sensitive data.  Separate data storages absent that sensitive data were frequently created as a workaround.  These solutions kept sensitive data protected but needed to be regularly maintained and updated.  That didn’t always happen timely.  This approach to data governance eventually resulted in data silos often consisting of stale data. 

Building out the infrastructure necessary to provide ...