Flight Info Direct Quick Start Guide

Get started with Snowflake so you can quickly access our data.

Check if your organisation already has a Snowflake account.

If your company does not already have an account with Snowflake, OAG will provision a managed reader account for you in a region close to your location. If you are an existing Snowflake customer, then we will create a data share to your account based on the details that you provide. If you are unsure, please speak to your account manager.

 

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For customers with an existing Snowflake account

OAG will provision an outbound data share to your Snowflake account from the same region. If not already provided, we will need your Account Locator and Snowflake Region, as well as the cloud platform e.g. AWS or Azure if available for the setup. For more details on account identifiers, please refer to here.

As soon as the outbound data share has been configured on our side, we will notify you and the account administrator of your Snowflake account will have to accept the inbound data share and create the necessary database(s) in your account as necessary to access the data.

As each customer’s Snowflake account is unique to their organisation, we are unfortunately unable to assist with technical issues outside of the data share from OAG’s account. For these issues please contact your organisation’s account administrator.

 

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For customers without an existing Snowflake account

Receiving the URL of the managed reader account

If you signed up for a Flight Info Direct subscription and your organisation does not have an existing account with Snowflake, you should soon receive, or have already received a URL and a set of credentials to access your OAG-managed reader account. The URL will look something like this:

https://AB12345.region.snowflakecomputing.com

The bolded section of the URL is your Account Locator while the underlined section is the Snowflake Region. Both of these sections together, e.g. AB12345.region, is known as your Account Identifier. This will be needed when connecting to Snowflake via methods other than the web UI such as Python.

Credentials (username & password)

Your credentials will also be included in the email and will come in the form of your email address and a one-time password to be used on the first login.

Logging in to the Web UI

When you access the URL provided, you are actually logging in to Snowflake’s classic UI. As stated above you will be asked to change your password when logging in for the first time. Please do this before attempting to connect to Snowflake via other methods e.g. Tableau or Python. The classic UI allows you to run SQL queries and access the data directly. However, there are limitations to the UI such as lack of automation/advanced scripting capabilities and a download limit of 100MB. In order to make full use of the Snowflake platform it is recommended to also try other connection methods such as Python connectors, JDBC or even Snowflake’s new UI under test called Snowsight*.

 

*In order to use Snowsight, please contact your account manager as we will have to activate it for your account.

Database, Schema and Table/View

The databases, schemas and tables available to you in the managed reader account will depend on your subscribed data set. However, it will always follow a similar pattern. We will create a specific view name in Snowflake based on the name of your organisation. If your organisation name is OAG AVIATION, the basis of your database table names would likely be OAG_AVIATION or similar except for reference data. Using OAG_AVIATION as an example:

The easiest way to check the names and databases is by logging in to the UI, using the reader account details above, opening the Worksheets tab and expanding the database(s) on the left:

There you will see the name of the Database, followed by the Schema and under that the name of the View that you can use to access the data.

Warehouse

A warehouse, which is used to process and run the queries in the managed reader account, will also be created by OAG. By default, we will create an X-small warehouse with 1 cluster and an auto-suspension time of 5 minutes which is sufficient for the needs of most of our customers. The default name of the warehouse is GENERAL. The warehouse is also where processing credits are being used by Snowflake and therefore charged to your account.

Warehouse use and credit limits

Depending on your subscription, OAG will provide a number of free Snowflake credits for customers to query the data in the reader account. If you are just trying out Flight Info Direct, when you have used up all the credits in the trial period, your account will be suspended until a request is made to your account manager for additional credits. For customers on a paid subscription, you will be charged for the additional credits used.

What are Snowflake credits?

Executing an SQL query in an OAG-managed reader account

Most SQL queries in Snowflake require you to establish the warehouse, database and schema. If you are using the Snowflake UI, you may change these within the highlighted section below:

Alternatively, it is also possible to do so via commands directly in the worksheet or your preferred connector.

To establish the warehouse, use the following command:

use warehouse GENERAL;

This makes sure that the subsequent queries within the same session will make use of the warehouse to process the query.

In order to preselect the database and schema (assuming database is OAG_SCHEDULES and schema is DIRECT_CUSTOMER_CONFIGURATIONS), you may also use the following commands:

use database OAG_SCHEDULES;

use schema DIRECT_CUSTOMER_CONFIGURATIONS;

You are now ready to execute your first SQL query. Here is a sample SQL code where we are intending to get all the data for today’s schedule snapshot in the OAG Schedules Data*:

SELECT * FROM OAG_AVIATION_SCHED WHERE FILE_DATE=CURRENT_DATE;

Simply replace OAG_AVIATION with the name of the view that was provided to you in the reader account.

 

It is also possible to use call views/tables from a database/schema directly. For example, if we run the following query:

SELECT * FROM OAG_SCHEDULES.DIRECT_CUSTOMER_CONFIGURATIONS.OAG_AVIATION_SCHED 
WHERE FILE_DATE=CURRENT_DATE;

It will be the same as running all of the following lines of code at the same time:

use database OAG_SCHEDULES; 
use schema DIRECT_CUSTOMER_CONFIGURATIONS;
SELECT * FROM OAG_AVIATION_SCHED
WHERE FILE_DATE=CURRENT_DATE;

Most SQL commands are available for you to execute in a reader account. For a list of commands that are allowed or not allowed in managed reader accounts, please refer to this page.

User Roles & Permissions in OAG-managed Reader Accounts

User accounts created for our customers within managed reader accounts will by default be set to the PUBLIC role which allows read-only access to the data. If you need administrative support within the reader account, please contact your account manager or support@oag.com.

 

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Record Layouts

Depending on your subscription, you may have access to one or more data sets. The link to the record layouts which include the names of the fields and explanations for each of these data sets can be found here.