How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server?

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How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server? Part one of a five-part series of blogs
All dialects of SQL are similar, you'd think, but the different ethos and editing environment of Snowflake versus SQL Server make the switch surprisingly difficult, as this blog explains. How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server? (this blog) Differences in SQL You write Snowflake in a very different environment Relationships and primary keys don't exist in Snowflake Some SQL programming differences

How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server?

Part one of a five-part series of blogs

All dialects of SQL are similar, you'd think, but the different ethos and editing environment of Snowflake versus SQL Server make the switch surprisingly difficult, as this blog explains.

How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server? (this blog)
Differences in SQL
You write Snowflake in a very different environment
Relationships and primary keys don't exist in Snowflake
Some SQL programming differences

Posted by Andy Brown on 28 January 2026

We've decided to expand our range of SQL training to include dedicated Snowflake SQL courses. To help you choose between Snowflake SQL and Transact SQL (the dialect used by SQL Server) we've created this blog summarising the main differences from the point of view of a SQL programmer, divided into these parts:

Difference	Notes
Differences in the SQL language	Every SQL dialect has slight (but annoying differences) - we've summarised by far the most common ones.
A different programming environment	Snowsight (the Snowflake editing enviroment) is very differet from SQL Server Management Studio!
Relationships and primary keys	Astonishingly (if you come from a SQL Server background) these don't exist in Snowflake.
Advanced programming differences	The way in which you create and use stored procedures and table functions is different between T-SQL and Snowflake SQL.

If you're wondering what Snowflake is ... it's a cloud-based platform allowing organisations to store and analyse large datasets, with the key principle of pay-per-use (the more queries you run, the more you'll pay).

Parts of this blog
How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server? (this blog) Differences in SQL You write Snowflake in a very different environment Relationships and primary keys don't exist in Snowflake Some SQL programming differences

Some other pages relevant to these blogs include:

Courses in Snowflake

You can also book hourly online consultancy for your time zone with one of our 7 expert trainers!

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