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“Event Table” on Snowflake

“EVENT TABLE” → Logging

transactions natively on Snowflake
Somen Swain · Follow
Published in Snowflake · 5 min read · 4 days ago

15 1

In this blog we would be discussing about “event tables”. Event tables

designed to capture a speci c set of event within Snow ake. Event table
should not be considered as a standard table since it is speci cally designed
for logging and tracing activities natively within the platform.

Snow ake’s telemetry APIs are what allows to collect and spread events. The
telemetry APIs are supported across various languages for UDFs, UDTFs,
and stored procedures. These are the primitives that can be utilised
independently for formulating questions, as well as being utilised when
creating Native Applications.

Below are the speci c operations that can be performed on an event table
currently:

Event Table Operations

If we observe here it is worth noticing that in event tables we cannot

explicitly insert or update data the data.

There are various methods which speci es how the event table can be used
by the code handler. They are namely:

1. Event Tables : This when de ned would specify name of the event
table for logging messages from stored procedures and UDFs in this
account.

2. Log Level : Speci es the severity level of messages that should be

ingested and made available in the active event table. They can have
values like ‘trace’, ‘debug’, ‘info’, ‘warn’, ‘error’

3. Trace Level : Speci es the verbosity of trace events that should be

ingested and made available in the active event table.

Creating and setting up event tables

Let us see on how to create the event tables within Snow ake, there are
primarily 3 steps involved to create the event table. They are given as below:

1. Create an event table.

2. Associate the event table with the account.
3. Set the level for log and trace the events.

CREATE EVENT TABLE DEMO_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.DEMO_EVENT_TBL; --- Creating an ev

ent table.
ALTER ACCOUNT SET EVENT_TABLE = DEMO_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.DEMO_EVENT_TBL; --- As
sociate event table with an account.
ALTER SESSION SET LOG_LEVEL = INFO; --- Associate event table with an account.

Above are the commands through which the event tables can be created and
associated with an account.

Use Case: Tracking DML within Stored Procedure

Now, that we have got fair understanding on how event table can be
con gured. Let us now see how this can be implemented. I have taken a use
case like when we create a stored procedure and within it we do multiple
operations like inserts, updates and deletes. Then in this case at the end of
execution of each step of DML we need to track how many records got
impacted/a ected with those operations and event table can be helpful here
to track them.

The code snippet is given as below:

Step 1 :: Set up the event table.

CREATE EVENT TABLE DEMO_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.DEMO_EVENT_TBL; --- Creating an ev
ent table.
ALTER ACCOUNT SET EVENT_TABLE = DEMO_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.DEMO_EVENT_TBL; --- As
sociate event table with an account.
ALTER SESSION SET LOG_LEVEL = INFO; --- Associate event table with an account.

Step 2 :: Creating the procedure.

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE DEMO_EVENT_TBL_PROC(OTPT VARCHAR)

RETURNS VARCHAR NOT NULL
LANGUAGE SQL
EXECUTE AS OWNER
AS
$$
DECLARE
dmlcount integer;
COL varchar;
QUERY STRING;
counts int := 0;
BEGIN
LET START_DATE TIMESTAMP := CURRENT_TIMESTAMP();
SYSTEM$LOG('INFO', 'Procedure started at: ' || TO_CHAR(START_DATE, 'YYYY-MM-D
D HH24:mi:ss'));
--- To Perform deletes
QUERY := 'DELETE FROM DEMO_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.CUSTOMER WHERE C_CUSTOMER_ID=''
AAAAAAAABEMAMPEA''';
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE :QUERY;
SELECT $1 INTO counts FROM table(result_scan(last_query_id()));
IF (counts > 0) then
SYSTEM$LOG('INFO', 'Total number of records deleted are: ' || :counts);
END IF;

--- To perform inserts

QUERY := 'INSERT INTO DEMO_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.BKP_CUSTOMER SELECT * FROM DEMO
_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.CUSTOMER LIMIT 10';
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE :QUERY;
SELECT $1 INTO counts FROM table(result_scan(last_query_id()));
IF (counts > 0) then
SYSTEM$LOG('INFO', 'Total number of records inserted are: ' || :counts);
END IF;

--- To perform updates

QUERY := 'UPDATE DEMO_DB_1.DEMO_SCHEMA_1.CUSTOMER SET C_CUSTOMER_SK=''8362700
0'' WHERE C_CURRENT_HDEMO_SK>=''3320''';
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE :QUERY;
SELECT $1 INTO counts FROM table(result_scan(last_query_id()));
IF (counts > 0) then
SYSTEM$LOG('INFO', 'Total number of records updated are: ' || :counts);
END IF;

LET END_DATE TIMESTAMP := CURRENT_TIMESTAMP();

SYSTEM$LOG('INFO', 'Procedure completed at: ' || TO_CHAR(END_DATE, 'YYYY-MM-D
D HH24:mi:ss'));
RETURN OTPT;
END;
$$
;

Step 2 :: Running the procedure.

CALL DEMO_EVENT_TBL_PROC('A');

If we see over here all our event table capture calls never includes the event
table itself but still the logs are captured since that is implicitly handled by
Snow ake.

Implicit population of the event table

Now, let us the result of the event table on Snow ake:

The impacted record count

Now, this is one such example how we can use event table within the
Snow ake platform. Additionally while executing this use case I could
observe some behavior summarizing them as below.
 Other additional properties.

You can get more information about event tables by reading through the
below Snow ake documentation:

https://docs.snow ake.com/en/developer-guide/logging-
tracing/tutorials/logging-tracing-getting-started

THANK YOU !!
Please keep reading my blogs it is only going to encourage me in posting
more such content. You can nd me on LinkedIn by clicking here and on
Medium here. Happy Learning :)

To get the details of the code please go the link event_table_code

Awarded as “Data Superhero by Snow ake for year 2023”, click here for
more details.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily re ect
the view of my current, former, or future employers.

Snowflake Logging And Monitoring Cloud Cloud Computing Data Superhero

15 1

Written by Somen Follow

Swain
315 Followers · Writer for Snowflake

Snowflake Data Superhero 2023 | AWS Solution Architect Associate | Snowflake Advanced
Architect | Principal-Data Engineering at LTIMindtree

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