Businesses are generating massive volumes of data today. Most organizations find it very difficult today to set up and maintain unwieldy databases and platforms which cannot be easily and quickly scaled up.
Oracle Database
Oracle database was first developed in 1977 and the commercial version was released in 1979. Since then, this platform has been the mainstay of most enterprises, meeting their data requirements. Oracle database helps in seamless storage and retrieval of data and runs on a wide range of hardware and software operating systems, including UNIX, GNU/LINUX, and Windows Server. Oracle was one of the first databases to have supported GNU/LINUX about two decades ago. Most applications can be integrated into the Oracle database because of its unique network stacking feature. Oracle is also an ACID-compliant database that ensures data reliability and integrity.
With such outstanding capabilities, why are organizations across the world opting to load data from Oracle to Snowflake?
Snowflake Data Warehouse
Snowflake is a comparatively new cloud-based data warehousing solution offered as a Software-as-a-Service product. As distinct from traditional databases, it has a multi-clustered shared data architecture that is dynamic and can be speedily scaled up or down. Even though the same data can be accessed by multiple clusters, each works independently and without contention. There is thus no drop in performance when many users run complex queries simultaneously. This is a critical reason to load data from Oracle to Snowflake.
Features of Snowflake
Several features of Snowflake make this data warehousing solution a cut above the Oracle database.
- Data safety and security – There can be no doubts about the iron-clad data safety and security in Snowflake, a facet that is crucial for those in the modern business environment. The database automatically encrypts all data with multi-factor authentication and federated authentication helping to strengthen data security.
Snowflake offers granular access control on all objects, thereby ensuring that communication between users and databases is encrypted. Strict security standards like HIPAA are complied with as access control audit exists on all facets from data objects to activities within the database. This is made possible by third-party authentication and validation.
- Database Replication – This is a feature that has been recently added to Snowflake. Those using the Standard version and above reap the advantages of non-business continuity and disaster data recovery facilities. It includes secured data sharing across regions and the cloud and makes sure of easy data portability to help load databases from other databases like Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. The older Enterprise for Sensitive Data (ESD) version is now named Snowflake Business Critical (BC) edition and has a Database Failover and Fallback feature, chargeable only if used.
Benefits of Snowflake
There are several benefits of Snowflake that make it advisable to load data from Oracle to Snowflake.
- Instant data recovery in an outage – Snowflake’s Database Failover and Failback feature ensures quick failback and failover activity in case of an outage for seamless data recovery. Secondary databases available in the region will be triggered and act as primary databases for writing overloads. Once the outage is resolved, users can set in motion database failback and failover in the reverse direction for resuming normal business operations.
- Data freshness – The periodicity and frequency at which it is possible to load data from Oracle to Snowflake can be controlled. Thus data freshness requirements are always met. Replication in Snowflake is fast because it supports incremental data refreshes only and changes made since the last refresh is replicated.
- Real-time replication – The replication process in Snowflake occurs in real-time. The volume of data to be replicated is not a factor in the case of data recovery. In the case of a disaster in one region, data access and control is immediately provided in a different cloud service or region.
Snowflake is a complete SQL database and works optimally with Excel, Tableau, and other common tools that users are usually familiar with. SQL database requirements are covered by Snowflake through query tools, full DML, multi-statement transactions, and role-based security support.