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You will connect Elementary Cloud to Snowflake for syncing the Elementary schema (created by the Elementary dbt package).

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Create a user for Elementary cloud

  • Please create a Snowflake key-pair (private and public key) using this guide.
  • Using the public key generated in the previous step, please run the following in your dbt project folder: 
## Store the public key in an environment variable
export SNOWFLAKE_PUBLIC_KEY="<public key>"

## Print the query you should run to generate a user
dbt run-operation create_elementary_user --args "{'public_key': '$SNOWFLAKE_PUBLIC_KEY'}"
This command will generate a query to create a user with the necessary permissions. Run this query on your data warehouse with admin permissions to create the user.

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Permissions and security

Elementary cloud doesn’t require read permissions to your tables and schemas, but only the following:
  • Read-only access to the elementary schema.
  • Access to read metadata in information schema and query history, related to the tables in your dbt project.
It is recommended to create a user using the instructions specified above to avoid granting excess privileges. For more details, refer to security and privacy.

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Fill the connection form

Provide the following fields:
  • Account: Find your account by using the Snowflake account URL and removing snowflakecomputing.com. e.g. example.us-east-1. For more information, see Account Identifiers in the Snowflake docs.
  • Database name: The name of the database where your Elementary schema exist. e.g. analytics.
  • Warehouse: e.g. ELEMENTARY_WAREHOUSE.
  • Elementary schema: The name of your Elementary schema. Usually [schema name]_elementary.
  • Role (optional): e.g. ELEMENTARY_ROLE.
Elementary Cloud supports the following authentication methods:
  • Key pair (Recommended):
    • User: The user created for Elementary.
    • Private key: The private key you generated for Elementary. For more information, see Generate Private Key in the Snowflake docs.
    • Private key passphrase (optional)
  • User password (Deprecated, not recommended):
    • User: The user created for Elementary.
    • Password: The password you set when creating your Snowflake account.
Snowflake are in the process of deprecating single-factor username & password authentication for all human users. As a result, while still supported, we recommend configuring the user in advance using key-pair authentication rather than username & password, and configuring the user as TYPE=SERVICE (this is automatically handled in the user creation macro above).See here for more information regarding this change.

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Add the Elementary IP to allowlist

If you use network policies to restrict access, run this query on your data warehouse with admin permissions: 
CREATE NETWORK POLICY ELEMENTARY_CLOUD
	ALLOWED_IP_LIST=('3.126.156.226')
	BLOCKED_IP_LIST=()
COMMENT='IP used by Elementary Cloud to sync the Elementary schema';
After creating a network policy you would need to activate it. To activate a network policy for the elementary user simply run the following command - 
ALTER USER <user_name> SET NETWORK_POLICY = ELEMENTARY_CLOUD;

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Need help with onboarding?

We can provide support on Slack or hop on an onboarding call.