Modeling with Snowflake Semantic Views
Snowflake Semantic Views — a way to define business metrics and logic directly in your database, using a native schema-level object. For more information, see documentation.
Snowflake Semantic Views is in private beta on Team and Enterprise plans.
Reach out to [email protected] to learn more or request a demo.
With Snowflake Semantic Views, you can explore and analyze trusted measures, dimensions, and joins defined in Snowflake — all from Hex’s no-code Explore experience. This means less time rewriting calculations and reconciling discrepancies, and more time digging deeper into analyses and delivering consistent insights to the business.
Concepts
To effectively leverage your Snowflake Semantic Views within Hex, check how key concepts translate between the two platforms.
| Snowflake | Hex |
|---|---|
| view | model |
| table | dataset |
| relationship | join |
| fact | dimension |
| dimension | dimension |
| metric | measure |
| filter* | n/a |
*- filters currently not supported
Viewing transient joins
Only the join paths originating from the currently selected dataset are shown. Intermediary datasets in a join sequence will only display subsequent joins. When the final dataset in a join is selected, no preceding joins are shown in the Explore interface.
For example, consider the join sequence: CUSTOMERS → ORDERS → PRODUCT.
Selecting CUSTOMERS: shows joins to ORDERS and PRODUCT.
Selecting ORDERS: shows only the join to PRODUCT (with ORDERS as the starting point).
Selecting PRODUCT: shows no joins.
Prepare the model for import into Hex
Users can create a Semantic View in Snowflake Cortex Studio, or use DDL commands from a Hex notebook. We recommend using DDL statements to create Semantic Views. Please reference the Snowflake documentation on how to use SQL to set up a Semantic View.