Data Sharing and Data Collaboration
How sharing works
A share is a set of grants on database objects. Providers grant USAGE on the database and schema plus SELECT on tables or views, then add consumers. Consumers see a read-only database; they cannot clone it unless the provider enables it. Shares can include tables, secure views, secure UDFs, and schemas. Reader accounts let non-Snowflake customers consume data, with the provider paying compute.
Collaboration features
- Listings and the Snowflake Marketplace/Data Exchange for discovery.
- Cross-region and cross-cloud replication for shares and databases.
- Secure views are the standard way to expose filtered or masked data.
- Shares are live: changes to source data appear without copying.
Traps
- Tables with row access policies cannot be shared directly; use secure views.
- A share does not copy data; if the provider drops the source, consumers lose access.
- Consumers cannot re-share data to third parties unless the provider allows it.
- Reader account costs are borne by the provider.
- Replication is not sharing; cross-region consumers often need both.
Worked example: a provider in us-east-1 and a consumer in eu-west-1 - enable replication of the share or database to eu-west-1, then add the consumer to the replicated share. Rule of thumb: if the consumer is in another region or cloud, plan replication before you create the share.