# Getting started with the Snowflake PT-1:  Trial and connecting Tableau

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-03-24
- **Format:** Video · 29 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data engineering, Analytics
- **Tools:** Snowflake (data sharing, marketplace, warehouses); Tableau (data modelling, relationships)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/getting-started-with-the-snowflake-pt-1--trial-and-connecting-tableau
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoHjRkYa9PE

I'm kicking off a series documenting my own Snowflake learning journey from scratch, sharing it weekly as I go. In this first part I set up a 30-day free trial, explore the Snowflake interface, install the ODBC driver, and connect Tableau to query the sample data.

## Key takeaways

- Don't start the Snowflake 30-day trial until you genuinely have time to invest in it, otherwise you waste the clock sitting idle
- Snowflake is now cloud-agnostic — you can run it on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure, and pick a region close to your existing storage
- Connecting Tableau to Snowflake requires manually downloading and installing the ODBC driver from Snowflake's help menu, as it isn't bundled with Tableau
- Warehouses are the compute layer separate from data storage, so you can spin up multiple warehouses (e.g. for analytics vs data science teams) to avoid resource clashes and monitor usage
- The query history tab lets you see exactly what Tableau sends to Snowflake, including warehouse used, duration and row limits, which complements Tableau's own performance recording

## Chapters

- 0:00 Why I'm sharing this learning journey
- 1:33 The Zero to Snowflake guide and my data plans
- 2:59 Setting up the free trial account
- 5:26 Choosing edition, cloud and region
- 8:27 First look at the Snowflake interface
- 12:52 Installing the Snowflake ODBC driver for Tableau
- 14:29 Connecting Tableau and understanding warehouses
- 19:12 Building a data model on sample data
- 23:36 Reviewing query history and live performance
- 27:17 Wrapping up and next steps

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/getting-started-with-the-snowflake-pt-1--trial-and-connecting-tableau

---
just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena