Troubleshooting Snowflake tag management

Here are a few things to know about managing Snowflake tags in Atlan:

If a Snowflake tag is not attached to an asset, will enabling reverse sync trigger any updates?

When reverse tag sync is enabled, updates in Snowflake will only be triggered if an imported tag is attached to a Snowflake asset in Atlan or an existing Atlan tag for an asset is updated with an imported Snowflake tag.

Will Snowflake tags show up as native assets in Atlan?

No, Atlan currently does not support Snowflake tags as native assets.

Do corresponding tags in Atlan and Snowflake need to be of the same case for the sync to work?

Tag sync happens through case-insensitive name match. Even if the Snowflake tag and the corresponding Atlan tag have the same name but are of a different case, the tags will be synced and remain consistent between Atlan and Snowflake.

When reverse tag sync is enabled, will all Snowflake assets with tags in Atlan be updated in Snowflake?

Enabling reverse tag sync will not trigger any updates unless tag updates are made for the Snowflake assets either in Atlan or Snowflake.

If a tag is deleted in Snowflake, will the corresponding tag in Atlan also be deleted?

Only the imported Snowflake tag associated with the corresponding Atlan tag and its association with linked assets will be removed. The Atlan tag and the Snowflake assets to which the Atlan tag is attached will remain unaffected.

How will tag propagation work for Snowflake tags?

Atlan supports tag propagation based on asset hierarchy and lineage. This existing functionality will remain unaffected by imported Snowflake tags. To learn about tag propagation in Snowflake, see here.

How can I find out if reverse tag sync was successful?

If you're using the account usage method, expect latency of data for up to 3 hours. You can also use a table function like TAG_REFERENCES to confirm reverse tag sync.

What happens if a tag is deleted in Atlan but remains in Snowflake?

The tag will be recreated during the next Snowflake crawler run and linked to assets where the relationship still exists in Snowflake.

Does enabling reverse sync automatically push all updates to Snowflake?

No. However, you can set up playbooks in Atlan to update your Snowflake assets with imported tags at scale. If reverse sync is enabled for the Snowflake tags, updates will be pushed to Snowflake as well.

What is the default propagation setting for synced Snowflake tags and can it be changed?

When imported Snowflake tags are attached to assets after a crawler run, tag propagation is turned off by default in Atlan.

Can I restrict who can push asset-specific tag syncs to Snowflake?

No, this functionality is currently unavailable. However, stay tuned for more updates.

Will reverse sync remove a tag from an asset in Snowflake if it is removed in Atlan?

If a tag is removed from a Snowflake asset in Atlan, it will not delete the tag in Snowflake. Instead, the asset will no longer be linked to the Snowflake tag in Atlan only.

If tag propagation and reverse sync are enabled, will my assets in Snowflake display multiple values of the same tag?

If both tag propagation and reverse sync are enabled, and multiple values of the same tag are being propagated via different paths to a Snowflake asset:

  • Atlan will preserve all values of the attached tag on the asset.
  • Snowflake will only preserve the last modified value of the attached tag on the asset.

Is it possible to filter and select specific tags to import in Atlan?

No, Atlan currently does not support filtering and selecting specific Snowflake tags to import. Atlan will crawl all the tags associated with an asset in Snowflake.

Can Atlan reverse sync tags to dropped tables in Snowflake?

If tables are dropped in Snowflake, then the corresponding link between the table and tag is also removed. If new tables are created in their place, you will need to recreate the link.

You can either:

If you're also using dbt, you can use pre-hooks and post-hooks to preserve metadata like attached tags while building your dbt models. Refer to dbt documentation to learn more about hooks.

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