Clones

Introduction

Cloning in Snowflake allows you to create a quick, zero-copy duplicate of an existing database, schema, or table. This feature enables users to replicate data structures and content for testing or development without duplicating the underlying storage.

The Snowflake emulator supports database cloning, enabling you to create quick duplicates of databases, schemas, or tables. Currently, CREATE ... CLONE is supported by LocalStack.

Getting started

This guide assumes basic knowledge of SQL and Snowflake. Start your Snowflake emulator and connect to it using an SQL client to execute the queries below.

The following sections guide you through creating a database, inserting data into a table, and then cloning the database to verify data integrity.

Create a Database

The following SQL snippet demonstrates how to create a database named test_db.

CREATE DATABASE test_db;` 

The expected output is:

+--------------------------------------------+
| status                                     |
|--------------------------------------------|
| Database TEST_DB successfully created.     |
+--------------------------------------------+
0 Row(s) produced. Time Elapsed: 0.123s

Create a Table

Once the database is created, you can create a table within it. The following SQL statement demonstrates how to create a table named test_table with columns for id and name.

CREATE TABLE test_table (id INT, name TEXT);` 

The expected output is:

+----------------------------------------+
| status                                 |
|----------------------------------------|
| Table TEST_TABLE successfully created. |
+----------------------------------------+
0 Row(s) produced. Time Elapsed: 0.067s

Insert Data

To insert data into the test_table, use the INSERT INTO statement. This example inserts a single row with the values (1, 'test').

INSERT INTO test_table VALUES (1, 'test');

The expected output is:

+----------------------------------------+
| status                                 |
|----------------------------------------|
| 1 Row(s) inserted.                     |
+----------------------------------------+
1 Row(s) produced. Time Elapsed: 0.024s

Create a Clone

With data now in test_table, you can create a clone of the entire test_db database. This will produce a new database, test_db_clone, containing all objects and data from the original test_db.

CREATE DATABASE test_db_clone CLONE test_db;

The expected output is:

+--------------------------------------------+
| status                                     |
|--------------------------------------------|
| Database TEST_DB_CLONE successfully created. |
+--------------------------------------------+
0 Row(s) produced. Time Elapsed: 0.101s

Verify Data in Clone

To confirm that the data has been cloned, query the test_table in the test_db_clone database.

SELECT * FROM test_db_clone.test_table;

The expected output is:

+----+------+
| id | name |
|----|------|
|  1 | test |
+----+------+
1 Row(s) produced. Time Elapsed: 0.012s