Shorts

A collection of random, small things I learned or found interesting.

• Snowflake permissions are object-type specific · Feb 1, 2025

  Snowflake requires separate access permissions for each object type in a database. You can’t just GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES, you need to also grant on iceberg tables, views, external tables, dynamic tables, and all their future versions… 🙈 Oddly enough, secure views are the exception and don’t need separate grants. 🤷

  snowflake sql permissions

• Snowflake casts 'YES'/'NO' strings to booleans · Feb 1, 2025

  Snowflake’s information schema uses ‘YES’/‘NO’ strings (like is_iceberg). Surprisingly, these cast directly to booleans:

  CAST('YES' AS BOOLEAN)  -- true
  CAST('NO' AS BOOLEAN)   -- false
  

  But string comparison fails: 'YES' = true returns false. Always cast first.

  snowflake sql

• dbt uses the + sign for multiple purposes · Feb 1, 2025

  In dbt, the + sign has different meanings depending on context. In selectors it means ‘include parents/children’, but in grants config it means ‘add to existing grants rather than replace’. Check the grants docs for details.

  dbt

• VS Code Copilot shell detection fix · Feb 1, 2025

  If VS Code Copilot isn’t detecting your shell properly, it’s likely your right-hand prompt (RPROMPT) interfering. Add this to .zshrc:

  if [[ "$TERM_PROGRAM" == "vscode" ]]; then
      unset RPROMPT
      unset RPS1
  fi
  

  vscode zsh copilot

• Publishing a remote MCP server · Feb 1, 2025

  To publish a remote MCP server to the registry, create a server.json with the schema:

  {
    "$schema": "https://static.modelcontextprotocol.io/schemas/2025-12-11/server.schema.json",
    "name": "com.example/my-server",
    "remotes": [{ "type": "streamable-http", "url": "https://api.example.com/mcp" }]
  }
  

  See the MCP registry docs for authentication options.

  mcp ai

• Setting secrets in dbt for MotherDuck · Feb 1, 2025

  You can configure secrets directly in your dbt profile for MotherDuck. Useful for S3/MinIO credentials:

  secrets:
    - type: s3
      name: my_bucket
      key_id: "{{ env_var('AWS_ACCESS_KEY') }}"
      secret: "{{ env_var('AWS_SECRET_KEY') }}"
      persistent: true
  

  dbt motherduck duckdb