2026 Meet-Up Theme Suggestion: Lakehouse on Snowflake

Summary: Shrinivas Vishnupurikar suggests a topic for a Snowflake User Group meetup, focusing on how Snowflake integrates into a lakehouse setup, particularly concerning Iceberg and Dynamic Tables. They seek insights on when to prefer Snowflake-managed Iceberg tables versus external ones, and the role of Dynamic Tables compared to Streams and Tasks. Abhijeet Zagade agrees this would be valuable and adds a suggestion to discuss MCP vs. RAG, prompting a consideration of combining data engineering and AI topics in meetups. The consensus is to adopt a theme that incorporates both areas, allowing updates on developments in data engineering and AI simultaneously.

AI Summary

Hi everyone,

Sharing a topic suggestion for a future Snowflake User Group meetup.

As someone still early in my data engineering journey and prior experience in databricks, I have been trying to understand how Snowflake fits into a lakehouse setup, and I keep running into a few open questions around Iceberg and Dynamic Tables.

Some things I would love to see covered in a session:

Snowflake-managed Iceberg tables vs external Iceberg tables

When should teams prefer Snowflake-managed Iceberg tables, and when do external Iceberg tables on S3, ADLS, or GCS make more sense?
How do people think about trade-offs like cost, performance, governance, and portability in real projects?

Dynamic Tables vs Streams and Tasks

Dynamic Tables look simpler for some ELT use cases, but where do they actually fit best?
When are they a good replacement for Streams and Tasks, and when are they not?

A practical session answering these kinds of questions would be very helpful for many of us who are actively working on Snowflake and designing pipelines.

Just sharing this as a suggestion. Looking forward to upcoming meetups and learning from the community.

Thanks.

5 comments

Abhijeet Zagade

4 weeks ago

That would be a good learning , as many of us dont really have experience with iceberg tables and format.

Dynamic tables would be one good problem to solve we all as DEs have came across.

Lets start putting together few notes around these topics to take it up inour next Usergroup meetup.

Abhijeet Zagade

2 weeks, 3 days ago

Another topic we can focus in next meet-up can be MCP (Model Context Protocol) , this would be a good next episode of our series on Cortex Analyst.

We would also here try to differentiate RAG from MCP.

Any thoughts , please share

Shrinivas Vishnupurikar Kulkarni

2 weeks, 3 days ago

That is a great suggestion. MCP is an important topic, especially as we work more with Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Analyst.

I want to clarify one point to avoid confusion while planning.

Dynamic Tables vs Streams and Tasks is clearly a data engineering–focused topic. MCP and RAG vs MCP, on the other hand, leans more toward how AI agents interact with Snowflake and other tools.

Could you help clarify whether we want to:

keep one clear theme per meetup, or
purposefully combine data engineering and agentic AI topics in the same session?

This will help align the agenda, especially since a draft for Dynamic Tables vs Streams and Tasks was already shared earlier.

Happy to adjust based on the direction we choose.

Abhijeet Zagade

2 weeks, 3 days ago

Have a combination of DE and AI sort of theme, so we catchup new happenings in both the areas simulatneaously!

Shrinivas Vishnupurikar Kulkarni

2 weeks, 3 days ago

Solid Copy! I could start revising things right away. Just let me know.