We are so excited to announce this blockbuster, August 2020 release of the SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform (IIP). This release adds a brand new Extract Load Transform (ELT) capability for Cloud Data Platforms which allows you to push data transformation workloads to Cloud Data Warehouses such as Snowflake. With this release, you can enhance the enterprise security posture with built-in support for many cloud-based security services, improve connectivity with new Microsoft SharePoint, and updated Adobe Experience Platform Snap Pack. Our focus on user productivity is relentless and you will see it manifested with UI updates, enhanced Universal Search, and enhanced API Management. Additionally, organizational admins now get better operational insights with enhanced Snaplex dashboard.
Unified platform for both ETL and ELT
SnapLogic has been well known for its ETL platform but today’s cloud data warehouses enable you to accelerate data load and then provide compute capability to transform data once in the data warehouse. With August 2020 release we are complementing our ETL functionality with Extract Load Transform (ELT) capabilities that enable you to accelerate data load to data and to provide ultimate flexibility in transforming data by leveraging all computing resources across SnapLogic and a cloud data warehouse such as Snowflake, thus reducing TCO and enabling a faster time-to-value.
SnapLogic ELT allows you to extract data from SaaS applications and databases by leveraging a vast number of Snaps. You can visually define data transformations, no need to write SQL. These transformations are converted into SQL statements. SnapLogic pushes the resulting SQL query to Data Warehouses such as Snowflake by leveraging its compute resources. Since the data warehouses charge for every execution on their compute, you can balance the need to see a preview of an intermediate step in the pipeline with keeping the costs down.
To learn more about the new ELT capabilities, check out this demo video.
Improve your security posture with enhanced Snap Packs
As SnapLogic usage in customer environments have increased, we are becoming a part of the core infrastructure at many large enterprises. With that responsibility in mind, we are releasing a number of enhancements to meet the needs of our customers and to help your organization improve its security posture.
The Binary Snap Pack now supports the Cross Account IAM role, a role that delegates access across Amazon Web Services accounts. It helps many of you who are trying to move away from sharing access key and secret key and towards better security mechanisms in the cloud
REST Snap Pack now supports OAuth2 Mutual SSL that is crucial for connecting to certain web services such as ADP, a payroll provider.
Cassandra Snap Pack now provides support for SSL/TLS, a commonplace requirement in enterprises today.
SAP Snap Pack now contains JCo advanced properties so that your SAP systems can interface successfully with an external security product using SNC (Secure Network Communication).
Improved connectivity with other Snap Pack enhancements
Microsoft SharePoint allows for greater online collaboration and file sharing, both of which have become increasingly important in today’s remote work environment. To address this customer need, we are adding a *New* SharePoint Snap Pack with which you can manage content and collaborate effectively across the organization
SharePoint Online Snap Pack provides Get, Upload File, Create List, and 15 other Snaps for you to create, manage, search, and organize documents with ease.
To learn more, check out the SharePoint Online demo here.
Additionally, we are enhancing our Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Snap Pack with 3 new Snaps: S3 connector, File Generator, and Write Snaps allowing you to update and maintain the customer data in real-time in a single platform to give a cohesive view of customer activities across point-of-sale terminals, website visits, support channels, etc.
In the May release, we released the AEP Read Snap. In this release, we are adding the write functionality to this Snap Pack. S3 Connector Snap utilizes AEP’s flow API allowing for great performance even for large batch sizes.
Learn more about the Adobe Experience Platform Snap Pack here.
Platform enhancements with expanded universal search and improved Snaplex Dashboard
We continue to evolve the platform capabilities with a focus on productivity, ease of use, and ease of administration.
New Snap Dialog UI is now the default for all users. New UI provides you with Faster UI rendering, enhanced Iris Integration, and customizable forms. New Snap Dialog UI renders large schemas seamlessly, enables dynamic forms, and provides an easy to use interfaces for Snap configurations.
![Figure 1: New Snap Dialog UI](https://www.snaplogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Figure-1-New-Snap-Dialog-UI--1024x531.gif)
We have expanded on the Apple Spotlight like ‘Universal Search’ capabilities that we first made available a few releases back. Universal Search is your go-to-place in the platform to find what you are looking for. And we have added community to the search places in addition to the documentation. So you can now search for discussion threads in the community specific to a problem you are trying to solve.
![Enhanced Universal Search](https://www.snaplogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Figure-2-Enhanced-Universal-Search--1024x529.gif)
Another key update is the new Snaplex Dashboard. This follows up on updates to the Task and Insights dashboards in the previous releases. Snaplex Dashboard allows you to track key resource metrics for your Snaplexes such as nodes, cores, total memory, disk utilization etc. We have added disk utilization, file descriptors, and active threads as metrics that you can track. You can customize the dashboard extensively to meet your needs.
![Snaplex Dashboard](https://www.snaplogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Figure-3-Snaplex-Dashboard--1024x587.gif)
Enhanced API Management Functionality for a more integrated experience
Another key enhancement in the August 2020 release in more integrated API Management functionality. The Integrated API Management approach further reduces friction in defining policies for APIs that you want to expose to API consumers inside and outside the organization.
You can now define API Policies for tasks or API endpoints by going to your project space. New API Policy Manager provides following different policy types from Anonymous Authenticator, which lets anyone without authentication get some level of service to Authorized by Role, where you can define role based on an API key or Client throttling where you can define maximum request rates by role.
![API Policy Manager - Policy types](https://www.snaplogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Figure-4-API-Policy-Manager-Policy-types-.png)
In addition to supporting a wide range of policies including Generic OAuth2 policy that many enterprises require, we have also added an API Dashboard to see key metrics for all your API endpoints. You can see a graphical view of how your APIs are performing with metrics such as requests per minute, error percentage, and latency (99th percentile). You have an option to choose a time period of up to 24 hr or see the metrics for any specific API endpoint.
![API Dashboard shows 3 KPIs: Requests per minute, Error Percentage, and Latency 99th Percentile](https://www.snaplogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Figure-5-API-Dashboard-shows-3-KPIs-Requests-per-minute-Error-Percentage-and-Latency-99th-Percentile-1024x459.gif)
To learn more about the API Management enhancements, please check out this demo video.
SnapLogic eXtreme enhancements
SnapLogic eXtreme has also been enhanced with 2 key security updates to evolve with enterprises’ security best practices. The first one is support for External ID, when you are using the Cross Account IAM role for delegating access and the second one is Key Rotation for Enhanced Account Encryption.
Additionally, SnapLogic eXtreme now provides S3 Select Support that provides filtering capabilities when fetching a large number of rows of data from the S3 into SnapLogic eXtreme. It improves the S3 reads by up to 400% and reduces costs by 80%.
If you are not already part of the SnapLogic community, join the conversation here. Engage with others and get your questions answered and for upcoming product releases check out the ‘Release Notes and Announcements’ section in the community to get your first glimpse into what is coming next and let us know your feedback and feel free to leave a comment.
Finally, if you missed the product release webinar, you can watch it here and hear from our product team. You can always learn more about these updates by visiting the SnapLogic Documentation.