Quick Start: Snowflake¶

Extract data from MSSQL, load it into Snowflake, and generate dbt models -- in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites¶

skippr-dbt and skippr on PATH (Install)
Python venv with dbt-core and dbt-snowflake installed
Environment variables set:

export LLM_API_KEY="sk-..."
export SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT="MYORG-MYACCOUNT"
export SNOWFLAKE_USER="myuser"
export SNOWFLAKE_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH="/path/to/snowflake_key.p8"
export MSSQL_CONNECTION_STRING="server=tcp:127.0.0.1,1433;database=testdb;user id=sa;password=YourPass;TrustServerCertificate=true"

See Connect: Snowflake for key-pair setup and Connect: MSSQL for connection string details.

1. Initialise the project¶

mkdir my-workspace && cd my-workspace
skippr-dbt init mssql-migration

2. Connect the warehouse¶

skippr-dbt connect warehouse snowflake \
  --database ANALYTICS \
  --schema RAW \
  --warehouse COMPUTE_WH \
  --role ACCOUNTADMIN

3. Connect the source¶

skippr-dbt connect source mssql \
  --connection-string '${MSSQL_CONNECTION_STRING}'

4. Check prerequisites¶

skippr-dbt doctor

5. Run the pipeline¶

skippr-dbt run

The pipeline will:

Discover source schemas from MSSQL.
Sync data into Snowflake bronze tables.
Verify the destination tables are queryable.
Plan a silver (staging) layer with one model per raw table.
Author dbt SQL models with type casting and column mapping.
Validate by running dbt compile and dbt run against the warehouse.

6. Verify outputs¶

Generated config¶

# skippr-dbt.yaml
project: mssql_migration

warehouse:
  kind: snowflake
  database: ANALYTICS
  schema: RAW
  warehouse: COMPUTE_WH
  role: ACCOUNTADMIN

source:
  kind: mssql
  connection_string: ${MSSQL_CONNECTION_STRING}

dbt models¶

models/
├── schema.yml                   # source definitions
└── staging/
    ├── stg_raw_customers.sql    # silver model
    └── stg_raw_orders.sql       # silver model

Snowflake schemas¶

Schema	Contents
`ANALYTICS.RAW`	Bronze -- raw MSSQL data
`ANALYTICS.MSSQL_MIGRATION_SILVER`	Silver -- staged and cleansed
`ANALYTICS.MSSQL_MIGRATION_GOLD`	Gold -- mart-ready models