{"id":796,"date":"2025-10-24T08:52:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/?p=796"},"modified":"2025-10-24T08:53:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T08:53:26","slug":"how-to-work-with-slow-views-in-snowflake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/2025\/10\/24\/how-to-work-with-slow-views-in-snowflake\/","title":{"rendered":"How to work with slow views in Snowflake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes you are stuck with a slow view in Snowflake. Imagine this scenario:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’re trying to create an object with a slowpoke view as the source and development is as slow as taking the highway at 8 AM to work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You cannot edit and improve the view because it is a secure, shared object. The owner of the view is too busy cutting his toenails so no help will be forthcoming from that front. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bottom line, you’re stuck having to deal with this view that takes ages to show you the result of each iteration of your development efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is all hope lost? No, I tell thee!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way to speed up your development is to create a temporary table from the view. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SQL<\/span><\/span><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span>
CREATE<\/span> <\/span>TABLE<\/span> <\/span>SUPER_FAST_TABLE<\/span> <\/span><\/span>\n  <\/span>AS<\/span> <\/span><\/span>\nSELECT<\/span> * <\/span>FROM<\/span> SLOWPOKE_VIEW<\/span><\/span>\n;<\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre>SQL<\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Now, why does this work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A view is basically a stored SQL query. If this query has a lot of expensive operations, like complex JOINs, filters, etc. it will be slow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time you use the view in a query that you are modifying, all the underlying slow operations have to be performed from scratch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you create a table from this view, those slow operations do not have to be performed anymore, because the result is materialized as a table. Snowflake stores the table and you can leverage performance enhancing techniques as micro-partitioning, clustering, pruning, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In short, part of the reasons why this works are detailed below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SELECT * FROM SLOWPOKE_VIEW WHERE COLUMN1 = ‘THIS’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2192 All the slow operations have to be performed (complex JOINs, filters, aggregations, etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2192 Result of the query<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SELECT * FROM SUPER_FAST_TABLE WHERE COLUMN1 = ‘THIS’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2192 Result of the query<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes you are stuck with a slow view in Snowflake. Imagine this scenario: You’re trying to create an object with a slowpoke view as the source and development is as slow as taking the highway at 8 AM to work. You cannot edit and improve the view because it is a secure, shared object. The…<\/p>\n
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,4],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-snowflake","tag-sql"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/datadandies.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}