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Snowflake emulator written in Rust

29 starsRust

Snowflake Emulator in Rust – Test locally without cloud credits

by sivchari·Feb 17, 2026·2 points·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemWizardryNiche Gem
The Take

This actually implements a surprisingly large slice of Snowflake: VARIANT/ARRAY/OBJECT types, LATERAL FLATTEN, QUALIFY, MERGE, COPY, transactions and ~90 JSON/array/window functions — all exposed via Snowflake SQL API v2 and compatible with the Go driver so most clients can point at localhost. Running on DataFusion in Rust and shipped as a Docker image with testcontainers/GHA examples makes it immediately useful in CI; just remember it's an emulator, not Snowflake's full runtime, so you may hit edge-case behavioral differences.

Target Audience

Backend developers, data engineers, QA/CI engineers, and teams building/testing Snowflake-dependent applications

Post Description

I built a local Snowflake emulator using Rust and DataFusion.

Problem: Snowflake is cloud-only. Testing requires real compute costs.

Solution: A local emulator that's compatible with Snowflake SQL API v2 and the official Go driver.

Supports VARIANT types, JSON functions, LATERAL FLATTEN, window functions, and transactions.

Useful for CI pipelines and local development.

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