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Snowflake vs Stitch: What are the differences?
# Introduction
## Key Differences between Snowflake and Stitch
1. **Data Warehousing vs. ETL Tool Integration**: Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing platform that offers scalable storage and computing capabilities for analyzing big data, while Stitch is an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) tool that focuses on integrating data from various sources into a data warehouse or database.
2. **Data Transformation Capabilities**: Snowflake provides comprehensive data transformation features, including support for SQL, Python, and other programming languages, allowing for complex data processing tasks. In comparison, Stitch primarily focuses on data extraction, loading, and minimal transformation operations, lacking the advanced data manipulation capabilities of Snowflake.
3. **Cost Structure**: Snowflake's pricing model is based on credit usage and storage capacity, providing flexibility for users to scale their resources based on their needs. On the other hand, Stitch follows a subscription-based pricing model, which may be more suitable for organizations with a predictable data integration volume.
4. **Supported Data Sources**: Snowflake supports a wide range of data sources and integrations, including structured and semi-structured data from databases, data lakes, and real-time streams. Stitch, while versatile, has a more streamlined approach and focuses on seamless integration with popular databases and SaaS applications, offering simpler data source connectivity.
5. **Security and Compliance Features**: Snowflake emphasizes robust security features, such as encryption, access controls, and compliance certifications, ensuring data protection and regulatory compliance. However, Stitch provides basic security measures and may require additional configurations for organizations with strict security requirements.
6. **Compatibility and Ecosystem**: Snowflake integrates well with various data tools, BI platforms, and analytics services, making it a versatile choice for organizations with diverse data needs. In contrast, Stitch is designed for simplicity and ease of use, with limited integration options beyond basic data warehouse and database connections.
In Summary, Snowflake excels in data warehousing capabilities and advanced data processing, while Stitch focuses on streamlined data integration and ease of use for organizations with simpler data needs.
Cloud Data-warehouse is the centerpiece of modern Data platform. The choice of the most suitable solution is therefore fundamental.
Our benchmark was conducted over BigQuery and Snowflake. These solutions seem to match our goals but they have very different approaches.
BigQuery is notably the only 100% serverless cloud data-warehouse, which requires absolutely NO maintenance: no re-clustering, no compression, no index optimization, no storage management, no performance management. Snowflake requires to set up (paid) reclustering processes, to manage the performance allocated to each profile, etc. We can also mention Redshift, which we have eliminated because this technology requires even more ops operation.
BigQuery can therefore be set up with almost zero cost of human resources. Its on-demand pricing is particularly adapted to small workloads. 0 cost when the solution is not used, only pay for the query you're running. But quickly the use of slots (with monthly or per-minute commitment) will drastically reduce the cost of use. We've reduced by 10 the cost of our nightly batches by using flex slots.
Finally, a major advantage of BigQuery is its almost perfect integration with Google Cloud Platform services: Cloud functions, Dataflow, Data Studio, etc.
BigQuery is still evolving very quickly. The next milestone, BigQuery Omni, will allow to run queries over data stored in an external Cloud platform (Amazon S3 for example). It will be a major breakthrough in the history of cloud data-warehouses. Omni will compensate a weakness of BigQuery: transferring data in near real time from S3 to BQ is not easy today. It was even simpler to implement via Snowflake's Snowpipe solution.
We also plan to use the Machine Learning features built into BigQuery to accelerate our deployment of Data-Science-based projects. An opportunity only offered by the BigQuery solution
Pros of Snowflake
- Public and Private Data Sharing7
- Multicloud4
- Good Performance4
- User Friendly4
- Great Documentation3
- Serverless2
- Economical1
- Usage based billing1
- Innovative1
Pros of Stitch
- 3 minutes to set up8
- Super simple, great support4