Snowflake SDK Patterns

Overview

Production-ready patterns for

snowflake-sdk

(Node.js) and

snowflake-connector-python

using real driver APIs.

Prerequisites

• Completed

  snowflake-install-auth

  setup
• Understanding of callback-to-promise conversion patterns
• Familiarity with Snowflake's callback-based Node.js API

Instructions

Step 1: Connection Pool (Node.js)

// src/snowflake/pool.ts
import snowflake from 'snowflake-sdk';

interface PoolConfig {
  max: number;
  idleTimeoutMs: number;
}

class SnowflakePool {
  private pool: snowflake.Connection[] = [];
  private available: snowflake.Connection[] = [];
  private waiting: ((conn: snowflake.Connection) => void)[] = [];
  private config: PoolConfig;

  constructor(
    private connConfig: snowflake.ConnectionOptions,
    config: Partial<PoolConfig> = {}
  ) {
    this.config = { max: 10, idleTimeoutMs: 60000, ...config };
  }

  async acquire(): Promise<snowflake.Connection> {
    // Return available connection
    if (this.available.length > 0) {
      return this.available.pop()!;
    }
    // Create new if under limit
    if (this.pool.length < this.config.max) {
      const conn = snowflake.createConnection(this.connConfig);
      await new Promise<void>((resolve, reject) => {
        conn.connect((err) => (err ? reject(err) : resolve()));
      });
      this.pool.push(conn);
      return conn;
    }
    // Wait for one to become available
    return new Promise((resolve) => {
      this.waiting.push(resolve);
    });
  }

  release(conn: snowflake.Connection): void {
    if (this.waiting.length > 0) {
      const next = this.waiting.shift()!;
      next(conn);
    } else {
      this.available.push(conn);
    }
  }

  async withConnection<T>(fn: (conn: snowflake.Connection) => Promise<T>): Promise<T> {
    const conn = await this.acquire();
    try {
      return await fn(conn);
    } finally {
      this.release(conn);
    }
  }
}

// Singleton pool
export const pool = new SnowflakePool({
  account: process.env.SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT!,
  username: process.env.SNOWFLAKE_USER!,
  password: process.env.SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD!,
  warehouse: process.env.SNOWFLAKE_WAREHOUSE || 'COMPUTE_WH',
  database: process.env.SNOWFLAKE_DATABASE!,
  schema: process.env.SNOWFLAKE_SCHEMA || 'PUBLIC',
});

Step 2: Promise-Based Query Helper

// src/snowflake/query.ts
import snowflake from 'snowflake-sdk';

interface QueryResult<T = Record<string, any>> {
  rows: T[];
  statement: snowflake.Statement;
  sqlText: string;
}

export function query<T = Record<string, any>>(
  conn: snowflake.Connection,
  sqlText: string,
  binds?: snowflake.Binds
): Promise<QueryResult<T>> {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    conn.execute({
      sqlText,
      binds,
      complete: (err, stmt, rows) => {
        if (err) {
          reject(Object.assign(err, { sqlText }));
        } else {
          resolve({ rows: (rows || []) as T[], statement: stmt, sqlText });
        }
      },
    });
  });
}

// Multi-statement execution
export async function multiQuery(
  conn: snowflake.Connection,
  statements: string[]
): Promise<QueryResult[]> {
  const results: QueryResult[] = [];
  for (const sql of statements) {
    results.push(await query(conn, sql));
  }
  return results;
}

Step 3: Streaming for Large Result Sets

// src/snowflake/stream.ts
export async function* streamQuery<T = Record<string, any>>(
  conn: snowflake.Connection,
  sqlText: string,
  binds?: snowflake.Binds
): AsyncGenerator<T> {
  const stmt = await new Promise<snowflake.Statement>((resolve, reject) => {
    conn.execute({
      sqlText,
      binds,
      streamResult: true,
      complete: (err, stmt) => {
        if (err) reject(err);
        else resolve(stmt);
      },
    });
  });

  const stream = stmt.streamRows();
  for await (const row of stream) {
    yield row as T;
  }
}

// Usage: process millions of rows without memory pressure
// for await (const row of streamQuery(conn, 'SELECT * FROM big_table')) {
//   await processRow(row);
// }

Step 4: Python Context Manager Pattern

# src/snowflake_pool.py
import snowflake.connector
from contextlib import contextmanager
from typing import Generator, Any

class SnowflakePool:
    def __init__(self, **conn_params):
        self._params = conn_params

    @contextmanager
    def connection(self) -> Generator[snowflake.connector.SnowflakeConnection, None, None]:
        conn = snowflake.connector.connect(**self._params)
        try:
            yield conn
        finally:
            conn.close()

    @contextmanager
    def cursor(self) -> Generator[snowflake.connector.cursor.SnowflakeCursor, None, None]:
        with self.connection() as conn:
            cur = conn.cursor()
            try:
                yield cur
            finally:
                cur.close()

    def execute(self, sql: str, params: tuple = ()) -> list[dict[str, Any]]:
        with self.cursor() as cur:
            cur.execute(sql, params)
            columns = [desc[0] for desc in cur.description] if cur.description else []
            return [dict(zip(columns, row)) for row in cur.fetchall()]

    def execute_many(self, sql: str, params_list: list[tuple]) -> int:
        """Batch insert — much faster than individual inserts."""
        with self.cursor() as cur:
            cur.executemany(sql, params_list)
            return cur.rowcount

# Usage
pool = SnowflakePool(
    account=os.environ['SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT'],
    user=os.environ['SNOWFLAKE_USER'],
    password=os.environ['SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD'],
    warehouse='COMPUTE_WH',
    database='MY_DB',
    schema='PUBLIC',
)

users = pool.execute("SELECT * FROM users WHERE status = %s", ('active',))

Step 5: Error Handling Wrapper

// src/snowflake/errors.ts
export class SnowflakeQueryError extends Error {
  constructor(
    message: string,
    public readonly sqlState: string,
    public readonly code: number,
    public readonly sqlText: string,
    public readonly retryable: boolean
  ) {
    super(message);
    this.name = 'SnowflakeQueryError';
  }
}

const RETRYABLE_CODES = new Set([
  390114, // Connection token expired — reconnect
  390503, // Service unavailable
]);

export async function safeQuery<T>(
  conn: snowflake.Connection,
  sqlText: string,
  binds?: snowflake.Binds,
  maxRetries = 3
): Promise<T[]> {
  for (let attempt = 1; attempt <= maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      const { rows } = await query<T>(conn, sqlText, binds);
      return rows;
    } catch (err: any) {
      const retryable = RETRYABLE_CODES.has(err.code);
      if (!retryable || attempt === maxRetries) {
        throw new SnowflakeQueryError(
          err.message, err.sqlState, err.code, sqlText, retryable
        );
      }
      const delay = 1000 * Math.pow(2, attempt - 1);
      await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, delay));
    }
  }
  throw new Error('Unreachable');
}

Error Handling

Pattern	Use Case	Benefit
Connection pool	High concurrency apps	Reuses connections, prevents exhaustion
Promise wrapper	All Node.js code	Clean async/await instead of callbacks
Streaming	Large result sets (>100K rows)	Constant memory usage
Context manager	All Python code	Guarantees connection cleanup
Retry with backoff	Transient failures	Handles token expiry, service blips

Resources

• Node.js Driver Execute
• Node.js Consuming Results
• Python Connector API

Next Steps

Apply patterns in

snowflake-core-workflow-a

for real-world data pipeline usage.