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[Videos] Zuora Secure Data Share for Snowflake

By Lana Lee posted 07-26-2022 10:10

  


On May 18th, Zuora Community hosted a Table Talk on Zuora Secure Data Share for Snowflake which included a brief Snowflake overview, followed by a demonstration, and an overview of Secure Sharing - how it works, why we added this feature, and scope.  Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehouse that is trusted by numerous Zuora customers to blend data and run business intelligence and data science.

This feature enables your organization to access your Zuora data in real-time from directly within your organization's own Snowflake account. Secure Data Sharing eliminates the engineering effort traditionally required to manage data extracts, integrations, and data schema changes. Secure Data Sharing also provides your team with instant access to Zuora's comprehensive subscription operational and analytical data to make timely data-driven decisions based on data insights.

Accessing your Zuora data in Snowflake enables you to run reports and perform analytics on your Zuora data using your own business intelligence (BI) tool, using Snowflake as the data source. 

If you missed the sessions or just want to review what was covered, you can rewatch the Table Talks below.

Learn More About Zuora Secure Data Share for Snowflake

All the resources you need are below. Reach out to your CSM when you’re ready to add Snowflake Secure Sharing to your Zuora setup or if you have any further questions.

Additional Resources

 

Learn More

View Presentation 

[Playlist] Snowflake Secure Share (May 2022)

Q&A Highlights 

  • If we don’t use this feature, what alternatives exist for pulling data from Zuora to feed Snowflake with?
    The most common method customers use today (before the introduction of this feature) is Zuora’s AQuA API. AQuA has synchronization capabilities built-in that allow customers to query Zuora and retrieve only updated records since the last sync. Several popular integration services (like Fivetran and Stitch) run against AQuA. AQuA provides access to Zuora Billing data. Customers who want to sync data for Zuora Central Platform objects (like Custom Objects) typically rely on the Zuora Data Query API. For Zuora Revenue data, customers sync data from Zuora Revenue APIs. The Snowflake Secure Sharing option requires no code to integrate with Zuora APIs and was designed to streamline and obviate the processes and work traditionally associated with getting Zuora data into Snowflake.

  • How do you handle end-user Snowflake accounts that might be in different regions or cloud platforms from Zuora?
    Currently, Snowflake Secure Sharing is available for customers whose Snowflake accounts are running in AWS US West 2 (Oregon). Today, if you want to make use of this feature, you will need to have your Snowflake account there. We working to expand support to multiple AWS and Azure regions and anticipate this will be available for customers by the middle of the year.

  • How does Zuora Multi-Entity work with Snowflake Secure Sharing?
    This feature supports customers running Zuora Multi-Entity. Every entity will be made available in a single share from Zuora. Within the share, each entity will appear as a separate schema.

  • Will this feature allow us to see deleted Zuora data records?
    Yes, you will be able to access and query deleted records from your share. Every record in the share will include an “Is Deleted” boolean column indicating whether the record has been deleted in the source Zuora system. Given this, users of the share will need to make sure all queries include filters to include only records that are not deleted unless deleted data is desired in the query result.

  • We have multi-entity, will it show all children and global entities?
    Yes.

  • We’ve setup a data share with vendors that utilize Snowflake Views. We have occasionally noticed that sometimes query response times against views are slower than tables in Snowflake. Does Zuora utilize views or tables in its secure share?
    Zuora currently uses Snowflake Views in its share.

  • In the API today, there are some restrictions to access certain types of data (e.g. PII), would this secure share have similar restrictions?
    PCI data will not be available with secure share. However, PII will be included.

    • What is the cost associated with this feature?
      Zuora covers the compute ingestion to get your data loaded into Snowflake (which can often be a significant portion of your overall Snowflake spend for maintaining Zuora data in Snowflake) as well as all storage costs associated with your Zuora data. Customers are responsible for any compute used in your account against the share (paid to Snowflake). This is an add-on feature and there is also an annual license fee paid to Zuora to gain access to this capability.

  • Does this feature only have one-directional sync?

Yes, it is a one-direction sync from Zuora to Snowflake.

  • What is setup process for this feature? Do customers have to do any work to set it up?
    Provisioning is handled fully by the Zuora team. Customers need to provide Zuora with a few details about their Snowflake account and then Zuora manages the entire setup process. There is no provisioning fee and no global services required.

  • What is the latency of data? Can we control the frequency?
    Data is synchronized to Snowflake in near-real-time and averages under 30-minutes from time of record creation or update in Zuora to time of being available to query in Snowflake. There are currently no options to control the frequency of the sync.

  • Is this feature available for the EU cloud?
    We currently only have availability in AWS West 2 (Oregon). We working to expand support to multiple AWS and Azure regions and anticipate this will be available for customers by the middle of the year.

  • Are custom tables and custom fields also synced?
    Custom Fields are supported today. Custom Objects are currently in development and scheduled for release by the middle of this year.

  • I see an inserted "exchange rate" field, will that get synced as well?
    The share includes all custom FX rates that a customer may have uploaded into Zuora. It will not include exchange rates from Zuora’s FX rate provider Oanda.

  • Is this feature available both for sandbox and production tenants?
    Currently it is only available for production tenants.

  • Is this feature available for Zuora Revenue?
    Development is underway to add Zuora Revenue BI views into the share. These views are scheduled for release in the share by the middle of this year.

  • Is Collections Window supported as part of the Collect tables provided? Will they be available in the future?
    The feature does not currently support Collections Window or Lockbox data, but those are under consideration on the Zuora product roadmap.

  • When the Zuora DB structure changes, is it reflected automatically in Snowflake?
    Zuora will manage additions to the data schema for customers so that they do not have to worry about data integration updates or schedule data engineer team time before they can make use of the data in their BI tools. Schemas are not versioned in the Snowflake Share from Zuora and in the event that there is a breaking schema change (e.g. field removed, table renamed), Zuora will proactively notify customers with several months of warning before any change is released.
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