snowflake-semantic-views

Snowflake Semantic Views

Semantic views are the governed data model layer in Snowflake. They define entities, dimensions, metrics, time dimensions, and relationships over physical tables. Cortex Analyst generates SQL through these models.

When to use

• User asks "what semantic views exist", "show me the data model"
• User wants to create or modify a semantic view
• User asks about available metrics, dimensions, or relationships
• User wants to validate a semantic model or add verified queries

Discovery

List semantic views:

SHOW SEMANTIC VIEWS IN ACCOUNT;
-- or scoped:
SHOW SEMANTIC VIEWS IN SCHEMA my_db.my_schema;

Describe a semantic view:

DESCRIBE SEMANTIC VIEW my_db.my_schema.revenue_model;

Creating a semantic view

Semantic views are defined in YAML and created with SQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE SEMANTIC VIEW my_db.my_schema.revenue_model AS $$
name: Revenue Model
tables:
  - name: ORDERS
    base_table:
      database: MY_DB
      schema: MY_SCHEMA
      table: ORDERS
    dimensions:
      - name: ORDER_ID
        expr: ORDER_ID
        data_type: NUMBER
      - name: CUSTOMER_NAME
        expr: CUSTOMER_NAME
        data_type: VARCHAR
      - name: REGION
        expr: REGION
        data_type: VARCHAR
    time_dimensions:
      - name: ORDER_DATE
        expr: ORDER_DATE
        data_type: DATE
    metrics:
      - name: TOTAL_REVENUE
        expr: SUM(AMOUNT)
        data_type: NUMBER
        description: Total revenue from orders
      - name: ORDER_COUNT
        expr: COUNT(*)
        data_type: NUMBER
        description: Number of orders
$$;

Key concepts

• Entities: Logical tables in the model, mapped to physical base tables
• Dimensions: Columns you group by or filter on (categorical, text, numeric IDs)
• Time dimensions: Date/timestamp columns for time-series analysis
• Metrics: Aggregation expressions (SUM, COUNT, AVG, etc.)
• Relationships: Joins between entities (defined with join keys and relationship type)
• Verified queries (VQRs): Pre-validated question-to-SQL pairs that improve Analyst accuracy