Snowflake Connector for Google Analytics Aggregate Data ingestion model

The Snowflake connector for Google Analytics Aggregate Data is subject to the Connector Terms.

This topic describes how the Snowflake Connector for Google Analytics Aggregate Data ingests data from the Google Analytics Data API and how sampling may affect ingested data.

Ingestion strategy

The connector uses two ingestion modes:

  • The initial load of data occurs directly after configuring the report. Successful initial load finishes with data ingested from a chosen start data up to today.

  • The ongoing load of data begins after completing the initial load. Incremental updates occur on a chosen, regular schedule.

The ingestion of each report is an independent process. Ingestion processes may be performed in parallel.

See Set up data ingestion for your Snowflake Connector for Google Analytics Aggregate Data instance to learn how to configure a report or choose a sync schedule and a start date.

Choosing interval length

The Google Analytics Data API requires specifying each request’s date range (startDate and endDate). The connector may make multiple requests during one ingestion load and adjust an interval length as required. The default interval is 31 days. The interval may be shortened automatically in the following situations:

  • The API responded with an error, which the connector may mitigate by retrying the request with a shorter interval.

  • The API responded with sampled data (only if the avoid sampling option was chosen during report configuration).

  • The report contains a large amount of data. In this case, the interval is shortened to reduce the risk of an API error when retrieving subsequent result pages.

The user cannot set the interval length.

Monitoring ingestion

Ingestion metadata is available in the CONNECTOR_STATS view. See more: Monitoring the Snowflake Connector for Google Analytics Aggregate Data.

SELECT * FROM PUBLIC.CONNECTOR_STATS ORDER BY COMPLETED_AT DESC;
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The METADATA column contains, among other things, the request body that was sent in a request to the Google Analytics Data API. The request body contains information about startDate and endDate.

The STATUS column may be equal to one of the following values:

  • COMPLETED - a successful ingestion.

  • CANCELED - the interval length was shortened and the ingestion will continue with adjusted date ranges.

  • FAILED - ingestion failed and was not continued.

Note

FAILED ingestion doesn’t necessarily mean that the data was lost. The connector may recover from some errors by attempting to download all missing data during the next scheduled report update. If succeeding ingestion runs were successful, the connector ingested all missing data.

To receive email notifications about failed ingestion runs, set up alerting. See more: Manage the Snowflake Connector for Google Analytics Aggregate Data.

About sampling

Sampling is the process of selecting and analyzing a subset of data from a larger dataset in order to extrapolate the result. This means that sampling lowers data quality. Data quality depends on number of samples used in the process. For more information see Google Analytics sampling.

Note

By default, the connector doesn’t try to avoid sampling. This setting can be changed only during the initial report configuration.

Obtaining sampling metadata

The METADATA column from the CONNECTOR_STATS view contains also sampling metadata. It can be joined with the data saved in a destination table.

Use the following statement to obtain information about the data that is sampled:

SELECT d.date, d.raw, d.last_update_date, cs.metadata:samplingMetadata:samplesReadCount::INTEGER as samplesReadCount, cs.metadata:samplingMetadata:samplingSpaceSize::INTEGER as samplingSpaceSize, samplesReadCount/samplingSpaceSize as ratio
FROM <destination_table> as d
LEFT JOIN <connector_stats_view> as cs
ON d.ingestion_run_id = cs.run_id
WHERE cs.metadata:samplingMetadata:samplingOccurred::BOOLEAN = true;
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Replace the placeholders with the actual values, as in the following example for a report named REPORT_1.

SELECT d.date, d.raw, d.last_update_date, cs.metadata:samplingMetadata:samplesReadCount::INTEGER as samplesReadCount, cs.metadata:samplingMetadata:samplingSpaceSize::INTEGER as samplingSpaceSize, samplesReadCount/samplingSpaceSize as ratio
FROM google_analytics_aggregate_data_dest_db.google_analytics_aggregate_data_dest_schema.report_1__raw as d
LEFT JOIN snowflake_connector_for_google_analytics_aggregate_data.public.connector_stats as cs
ON d.ingestion_run_id = cs.run_id
WHERE cs.metadata:samplingMetadata:samplingOccurred::BOOLEAN = true;
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The result contains the following information related to sampling.

Name

Description

samplesReadCount

The total number of events read in this sampled report for a date range.

samplingSpaceSize

The total number of events present in this property’s data that could have been analyzed in this report for a date range.

ratio

The number of analyzed events to the number of events that could have been analyzed.

The Google Analytics sampling metadata documentation provides more information about the meaning of the sampling metadata values.

Note

Metadata about ingestion performed before the upgrade to the 1.4.0 version doesn’t contain information about the occurrence of sampling. It is certain that the data is not sampled only if the samplingOccurred flag is equal to false.

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