Snowflake · Understand the Snowflake account

Semantic Cartographer

What is this table, who owns it, where does it come from, and what depends on it?

Operational failure

Teams can query data they cannot explain. Ownership lives in people’s memory, object comments drift, and impact analysis begins with manual investigation.

Read-only by default · evidence required · human approval before change

From source evidence to a reviewable finding.

01 · Source evidence

INFORMATION_SCHEMA
Selected ACCOUNT_USAGE views
Object comments and tags
ACCESS_HISTORY and lineage where available
Optional dbt manifests and glossary terms

02 · Analysis path

01
Inventory objects and declared metadata
02
Build relationship and lineage graph
03
Infer ownership and semantic signals
04
Index evidence for retrieval
05
Answer with citations and confidence

03 · Product outputs

Searchable semantic account map
Object profiles with ownership and provenance
Upstream and downstream dependencies
Ownership and documentation gaps
Cited natural-language answers

Security contract

The boundary is part of the product.

Data residency: Snowflake Native mode keeps the product workflow in the customer Snowflake account. Microsoft Foundry mode moves selected metadata or telemetry into the customer-controlled Azure boundary.
Permissions required: A dedicated scoped Snowflake role · Read access only to the listed metadata and telemetry views
Write scope: No write capability by default. Any remediation requires human approval and separately granted permissions.
Audit trail: Model calls, retrievals, source evidence, findings, recommendations and approvals are recorded for review.

Deployment choice

Native by default. Azure when the enterprise standard requires it.

Default for sensitive data

Snowflake Native App

Runs in the customer Snowflake account.
Uses Snowpark Container Services when a container runtime is required.
Customer controls installation, grants, compute and network policy.
Private listing first; Marketplace availability is not implied.

For Azure-standardised enterprises

Microsoft Foundry

Agent runtime, model routing, evaluation and tracing in customer Azure.
Snowflake access through customer-controlled OAuth or key-pair authentication.
Selected metadata or telemetry crosses into the designed Azure boundary.
Identity, network, retention and regional placement are explicit design decisions.

Pilot evidence

Decide from a baseline, not a demo.

01
Coverage of in-scope objects
02
Ownership and documentation gaps found
03
Time required to answer lineage questions
04
Citation precision on a reviewed question set

Evaluate Semantic Cartographer against your account.

Describe the decision, platform or operating risk that is slowing you down. We will identify the evidence required and whether consulting, training or a scoped agent is the right response.

Discuss the context