Is there an option to force partitions on a Snowflake table - snowflake-cloud-data-platform

Question

I want to look at creating partitions on Snowflake tables and forcing the end user to use them in a query. Intention is to prevent accidental huge queries on large tables
Is that possible?

Answer 1

Snowflake does not support "traditional partitions, it has "micro-partitions" which are created automatically. Please read the following document to understand "micro-partitions" of Snowflake:
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/tables-clustering-micropartitions.html#what-are-micro-partitions
The queries will always try to prune partitions based on query filters, but there is no way to force your users to specify a filter condition/partition.
To prevent accidental high credit usage, you may consider "resource monitor" feature. You may create a smaller warehouse, set a resource limit and assign this warehouse to users.
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/resource-monitors.html#creating-resource-monitors

Answer 2

No you can't create partitions manually in Snowflake, micro-partitions in Snowflake are created automatically based on when the data arrives rather than what the data contains. You can use cluster keys however to order the data within and across micro-partitions which will help with pruning out partitions when a query is executed.
You could force users to put predicates on their queries by using a BI tool or by parameterising your (secure?)views with a SQL variable and restricting access to the underlying tables. Obviously this would mean that your users would need to set their session variables correctly somehow, probably a bit too restrictive in my opinion but here is an example:
-- Set variable before creating the view
set predicate_var = 'Mid Atlantic';
-- Create view using parameter in the where condition
create or replace view test_db.public.parameterised_view as
select
*
from "SAMPLE_DATA"."TPCDS_SF100TCL"."CALL_CENTER"
where CC_NAME = $predicate_var;
-- Select from the view. Only records with 'Mid Atlantic' are returned
select CC_CALL_CENTER_SK, CC_NAME from test_db.public.parameterised_view;
--Results:
--|-------------------+--------------|
--| CC_CALL_CENTER_SK | CC_NAME |
--|-------------------+--------------|
--| 2 | Mid Atlantic |
--| 3 | Mid Atlantic |
--|-------------------+--------------|
-- Change the var to something different to prove it works
set predicate_var = 'NY Metro';
-- Select from the view to show that the predicate has changed
select CC_CALL_CENTER_SK, CC_NAME from test_db.public.parameterised_view;
--Results:
--|-------------------+----------|
--| CC_CALL_CENTER_SK | CC_NAME |
--|-------------------+----------|
--| 1 | NY Metro |
--|-------------------+----------|