Snowflake: Managing Access to Tables

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to configure Grant Kits to automate access requests to a Snowflake Table.

We will be using the Snowflake Starter Kit as a base and replace configuration stubs for our use case.

Before you start

1. Make sure you have:

   • An Abbey account

   • An Abbey API Token

   • A Snowflake account

2. Make sure you setup:

   1. A Snowflake Starter Kit by following Get a Starter Kit

   2. A Connection to a repo by following Connect a Repo

Step 1: Configure Your Grant Kit

Configure Output

Grant Kits rely on your GitHub account and repository name to output access changes, which we'll set through Terraform local variables. Update the locals block in main.tf with your account_name and repo_name

main.tf

 locals {
  account_name = "" #CHANGEME
  repo_name = "" #CHANGEME
  ...
}

Configure Reviewers

Workflow defines who should approve an access request.

Let's update the reviewers block by adding yourself as the reviewer by switching [email protected] with the email address you use to sign into Abbey.

main.tf

 resource "abbey_grant_kit" "..." {
   ...
   workflow = {
     steps = [
       {
         reviewers = {
-          one_of = ["[email protected]"] # CHANGEME
+          one_of = ["[email protected]"]

Step 2: Link Snowflake with Abbey

Now you'll need to link Snowflake with Abbey.

curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ABBEY_API_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  https://api.abbey.io/v1/users/<user_id>/apps \
  -d '{"type": "snowflake", "data": {"username": "<your Snowflake username>"}}'

Step 3: Replace Snowflake Stubs

You'll need to log into your Snowflake account to get your database, role, user(s), table schema, and table name.

main.tf

...

data "snowflake_database" "pii_database" {
-  name = "REPLACE_ME"
+  name = "PII_DATABASE" # Use your own name.
}

data "snowflake_role" "pii_readonly_role" {
-  name = "REPLACE_ME"
+  name = "PII_ROLE" # Use your own role.
}

data "snowflake_users" "my_snowflake_user" {
-  pattern = "REPLACE_ME"
+  pattern = "USERNAME" # Use your own username.
}

resource "snowflake_table_grant" "pii_readonly__can_read__pii__table" {
  database_name     = data.snowflake_database.pii_database.name
-  schema_name       = "REPLACE_ME"
+  schema_name       = "PII_SCHEMA" # Use your own schema.
-  table_name        = "REPLACE_ME"
+  table_name        = "PII_TABLE" # Use your own table.
  privilege         = "SELECT"
  roles             = [data.snowflake_role.pii_readonly_role.name]
  with_grant_option = false
}

...

Step 4: Deploy Your Starter Kit

First, add your Snowflake-related secrets to your repo:

• SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT

• SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD

• SNOWFLAKE_USERNAME

You can find this information in your Snowflake account.

What should it look like?

To deploy your Starter Kit, follow instructions from Deploy Your Grant Kit.

If you received an error for terraform plan with the message:

Error: 260008 (08004): failed to connect to db. verify account name is correct. HTTP: 403

This means you didn't configure the correct Snowflake account, username, or password. The Snowflake Terraform Provider requires correct credentials.

Also keep in mind if Snowflake requires you to have a valid database name, otherwise you'll see the error message:

The argument "database_name" is required, but no definition was found.

Step 5: Automate Access Management

🎉 Congratulations! Abbey is now managing permissions to your Snowflake Table for you. 🎉

You can now start requesting and approving access by following the Request Access and Approve or Deny Access Requests guides.

Abbey strives to help you automate and secure access management without being intrusive.

To that end, this Pull Request contains native Terraform HCL code using normal open source Terraform Provider libraries. It represents the permissions change. In this case, it's just a simple creation of a new Terraform Resource.

Next Steps

To learn more about what Resources you can configure, try one of our Step-by-Step Tutorials.

For more information on how Abbey works, visit the Key Concepts or Grant Kits page.