The PRQL: Comparing Snowflake to a Car

Eric Dodds 00:05
Welcome to The Data Stack Show prequel where we give you a preview of the show that we just recorded. cost us this was a really interesting one. And I’m gonna actually bring up something that’s kind of a teaser. But the car analogy to me was super interesting, where the driver is someone writing a SQL query. And the car is all of the other variables within Snowflake that contribute to the sort of conditions for performance that SQL query, and Vanunu from Blue Sky walked us through that. Tell me, did you think that was a good analogy? A helpful analogy?

Kostas Pardalis 00:48
Yeah, yeah. I think it was great. I think it’s really difficult to for anyone likes to grasp, let’s say, the complexity of this infrastructure and like how much it affects, let’s say, the organization because if you think about, like, data in the company, something that’s used, like by pretty much everyone, this happens, like through the data infrastructure, you have, and yeah, like, it’s really, really hard like to optimize it to like figure out like, what optimization means I’ll be in blank for you optimize for and like, is, it’s why was the SLA like, define what this cost? What is performance? And there are like, so many levels there. Which, like, at the end, like, Yeah, makes a lot of sense that you have products at the end like blue sky, but they do like, exactly bots. So and I have everything we will share, like more and more about like these kinds of like products in the future. So yeah, I would recommend to everyone like to listen to these episodes. It’s going to be like super useful for anyone who’s working in like maintaining data infrastructure.

Eric Dodds 02:01
I agree. Okay, here’s another really important question. When you open Snowflake and start writing SQL, do you feel like a competent driver? That is keeping the roads safe?

Kostas Pardalis 02:20
Do I sorry, I don’t know like what kind of car do you think your driving is more like a Ferrari or like it’s more like a Toyota? I don’t know.

Eric Dodds 02:32
What’s your feeling that impact your safe the how safe of a driver you are?

Kostas Pardalis 02:38
I mean, okay, like he’s a little bit optimized from safety rights. Little things you optimize like for fun?

Eric Dodds 02:48
What is that in Snowflake? A Ferrari is like an XL and a Toyota is like an x x small.

Kostas Pardalis 02:54
Right? Yeah, like a Prius is broken. X wasn’t cool. Small. The five XL thing probably Yeah, I didn’t know like it’s the

Eric Dodds 03:08
jet that’s a G six.

Kostas Pardalis 03:10
Loves the gist six. Yeah, yeah, probably you need the same amount of money to operate

Eric Dodds 03:20
all right, well, this is gonna be a great episode because Costas is doing the equivalent of flying a G six when he opens up the SQL query editor in Snowflake so check this episode out, and we will catch you on the next one.