Using Snowflake's Data Sharing Capabilities

Official answer

Secure Data Sharing lets a provider expose selected supported objects to another account, with consumers querying read-only shared data using their own compute. For a same-region direct share, the consumer does not need a separately maintained copy of the provider's table data.

The provider selects objects and grants them to a share, then enables the intended consumer account. The consumer imports the share as a database and grants its own users appropriate access. This separates data ownership from consumer compute administration.

For example, a supplier could expose an approved product-availability view to a retailer, avoiding repeated full-file exports. Agree on schema, units, freshness and availability so both organizations understand what the shared data means. Cross-region/cloud delivery uses an appropriate replication or fulfillment mechanism and may introduce lag and additional cost.

Sharing reduces some copying and synchronization work; it does not eliminate unauthorized-access or data-leak risks. Minimize columns and rows, validate entitlements from the consumer context, and review grants. A consumer may copy results, so access revocation cannot recall previous exports.

Evaluate success through delivery latency, data reconciliation, consumer reliability and total operating cost. Do not infer security or usefulness merely from the number of consumers or collaborative projects.

Consume shared data, secure sharing controls, replication scope