Talking to your data with Cortex Analyst from Snowflake

18 October 2024 | 3 minutes of reading time

Cortex Analyst is Snowflake's latest AI tool that simplifies the way we interact with data. This tool allows you to ask questions about your data in plain English. Then Cortex Analyst converts this into SQL queries, executes them automatically and returns you the result. We have tested this tool and are happy to share our first experiences.

Our first experiences with Cortex Analyst

We tested the effectiveness of this tool by using Cortex Analyst to analyze the relationship between price and demand. More specifically, the influence of prices on sales.

To conduct this analysis properly, we first devised a clear plan of action, which was to calculate the percentage change in price and percentage change in sales for each type of product and then plot these changes to discover any patterns.

We then got to work testing Cortex Analyst by asking specific questions to extract the data we needed from Snowflake. Thanks to Cortex Analyst's natural language processing, we were able to simply enter these questions in plain English and almost immediately got back the relevant data we needed.

One of the major advantages of the tool is that for each question the corresponding SQL query was generated and displayed. This allowed us to properly check whether the question had been interpreted correctly by Cortex Analyst and make adjustments where necessary.
Of course, we also checked the outcome each time against the actual data in our database to make sure everything was correct.

The downside of using Cortex Analyst is that it is not yet able to extract data from different data sets (read: tables). It is still necessary to create one large data set in advance.

This test shows that Cortex Analyst is a useful tool for users, who want to find quick and useful answers without technical knowledge, without having to delve into complex SQL queries.

Benefits of Cortex Analyst

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In our initial experience with Cortex Analyst, we noticed the following benefits:

  • Time savings: Users find their answers faster and do not have to spend time writing or understanding SQL code.
  • Simplicity: It makes data-driven decisions accessible to everyone, without technical barriers.
  • Transparency: The generated SQL query is displayed next to the answer, allowing you to check how your query was interpreted and make adjustments if necessary.
  • Security: Since Cortex Analyst works within Snowflake, you have the guarantee that the analysis is performed on your dataset within your own database, a big advantage over external AI tools such as ChatGPT or AI APIs where you still have to share your data with a third party.
  • Self-sufficient: It enables business users to generate insights independently without depending on a technical colleague.

Disadvantages of Cortex Analyst

We also ran into some limitations:

  • No ongoing conversations: The tool does not remember previous questions, so it cannot have a continuous dialogue as some other LLM agents do.
  • Accuracy required: Questions must be asked precisely, with the correct designations of columns and entities, for example. A small typographical error can lead to incorrect or no results.
  • Inconsistency: In some cases, non-unambiguous questions may yield different answers, meaning that the tool is not yet fully reliable for each type of question. For example, as in questions about what is "best.
  • Maximum 1 table: Cortex Analyst is not yet able to search multiple tables. This means you need to think in advance about what data Cortex Analyst needs and aggregate it.

Conclusion: Cortex Analyst bridges a gap

Cortex Analyst is a tool that bridges the gap between data analysis and natural language. It enables business users to gain insights faster, more accurately and efficiently without relying on IT specialists or data-science teams. Our initial experiences with the tool are cautiously optimistic. Although there are still some limitations, especially in user experience, Cortex Analyst offers a promising glimpse into the future of AI-driven data analytics within Snowflake. For companies looking to quickly and independently extract value from their data, Cortex Analyst could become a useful tool.

In any case, we will continue to follow closely the developments surrounding Snowflake's Cortex Analyst!

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