AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views: Governed Metrics, Everywhere Your Business Runs

Executive Summary

Snowflake Semantic Views centralize governed metric definitions inside Snowflake, but Microsoft tools like Power BI and Excel do not natively consume those definitions. AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint extends governed Snowflake metrics to Power BI and Excel through live XMLA connections without moving data or rebuilding business logic. The result is one consistent semantic layer across Snowflake CoCo, CoWork, BI tools, and enterprise analytics workflows.

Extend Snowflake Semantic Views to Power BI and Excel

Snowflake Semantic Views are one of the most meaningful advances in enterprise data governance in recent years. For the first time, business definitions — what “gross margin” means, how “active customers” are counted, what qualifies as “churn” — live inside the data cloud itself, governed at the source, available to Snowflake AI. When Snowflake CoCo or Snowflake CoWork answers a question about revenue, it draws from a definition that’s been reviewed, certified, and maintained by the data team. That’s genuinely powerful.

The natural next question enterprise data teams reach quickly: how do we get those same trusted definitions in front of the tools our business actually runs on?

The AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint was built to answer that question.

Why Governed Metrics Need to Extend Beyond Snowflake

Snowflake Semantic Views do not natively extend governed metric definitions into Microsoft tools like Power BI and Excel. AtScale solves this by exposing Snowflake Semantic Views through live XMLA connections so the same governed definitions are used consistently across CoWork, CoCo, dashboards, and spreadsheets.

That’s important because, for more enterprises, Microsoft tools are where business decisions get made. Finance teams model in Excel. Operations teams run Power BI dashboards. Executives review reports that pull from both. 

But when a Finance VP opens an Excel pivot table or a BI team publishes a Power BI dashboard, those tools don’t natively consume Semantic View definitions. Without a context layer, the “revenue” in Snowflake CoCo and the “revenue” in the Power BI report may not agree. That inconsistency is the difference between an organization that trusts its data and one that spends every reporting cycle reconciling numbers.

Why Governed Metrics Matter for AI Agents 

AI raises the stakes further. AI systems are only as trustworthy as the metric definitions behind them. If Power BI, Excel, and Snowflake AI tools rely on different business logic, AI-generated answers become inconsistent across the enterprise. Extending governed Snowflake Semantic Views across every analytics surface creates a shared semantic foundation for trustworthy enterprise AI.

How AtScale Extends Snowflake Semantic Views to Power BI and Excel

The AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint is a Snowflake-native offering that extends your Semantic View definitions to Microsoft Power BI and Excel through live XMLA-based connections.

The mechanics are straightforward: AtScale reads your existing Semantic View definitions — the dimensions, metrics, and relationships your team has already built and governed in Snowflake — and exposes them as live XMLA endpoints that Power BI and Excel connect to directly. No data movement. No duplicated logic. No rebuilding metric definitions outside Snowflake.

An analyst asks Snowflake CoWork about gross margin. The same definition answers when a Finance analyst opens an Excel pivot table. The Power BI dashboard uses it, too. Data and compute stay in Snowflake throughout.

What Problems Does AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views Solve?

• Metric inconsistency across BI tools
• Duplicate semantic logic
• AI answer inconsistency
• Governance drift
• Spreadsheet reconciliation
• Semantic duplication in Power BI
• Extract and pipeline sprawl
• Unnecessary compute duplication
• Data mirroring and movement costs
• BI team firefighting

How the AtScale Integration Works in Practice

Setup is designed to be fast. AtScale is a Snowflake Native App, enabled with a single DDL command in Snowsight. Once the XMLA endpoint is attached to a Semantic View, Power BI and Excel connect via a live MDX/DAX connection. Teams with Semantic Views already in production can reach Power BI and Excel connectivity in minutes.

From the consumer side, nothing changes. Power BI users connect to Snowflake through a live connection and see the full governed model, the same metrics CoCo uses, by definition. Excel users get live pivot tables and charts on governed Snowflake data without refreshes, extracts, or staleness.

Governance That Doesn’t Stop at the Snowflake Boundary

One of the practical strengths of the integration is that Snowflake governance travels with the definitions. Snowflake role-based access control and data masking policies are enforced on every query through AtScale. There’s no parallel permission layer to maintain. Security and access controls set up inside Snowflake apply automatically to Power BI and Excel consumers.

This matters for organizations where governance isn’t optional. Row- and column-level security, data masking, and access policies all enforce at the Snowflake layer, ensuring that a finance analyst in Excel sees exactly what their Snowflake role permits, and no more.

The Broader Partnership

The AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint is the product outcome of a growing strategic relationship between AtScale and Snowflake. Snowflake Ventures led AtScale’s most recent strategic equity round, reflecting a shared conviction that open, governed semantics is the right architectural foundation for enterprise analytics and AI on Snowflake.

Both companies are founding members of the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI), an industry initiative to establish a vendor-neutral specification for semantic metadata that is open, interoperable, and portable. As Josh Klahr at Snowflake described it:

“Our collaboration with partners like AtScale establishes a unified, vendor-neutral standard for semantic data, ensuring clarity and consistency across the entire ecosystem.”

AtScale’s Semantic Modeling Language (SML) — an open-source, YAML-based format for defining semantic models as code — reflects the same philosophy. The AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views integration is built on this foundation: governed definitions that travel, rather than logic that must be rebuilt in every tool.

One Governed Semantic Foundation Across AI and BI

Snowflake Semantic Views establish a powerful, governed definition of your business metrics inside the AI Data Cloud. The AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint extends that definition to the Microsoft analytics tools where most business users actually work without rebuilding what Snowflake already governs.

The result is architecture that makes Snowflake the system of record for business logic across every tool in the analytics stack. The semantic investment your team made in Snowflake becomes available everywhere it’s needed, with one source of truth maintained in the place where your data already lives.

For most enterprise teams, the starting point is simple: enable the AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint, connect Power BI and Excel, and watch the same numbers land in every tool. If requirements grow across tools, data warehouses, and AI use cases, there’s a clear path forward.

AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views vs. AtScale Enterprise

Both editions share the same semantic foundation. The right choice depends on where your analytics stack is today and where it needs to go.

Capability	AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint	AtScale Enterprise
Extends Semantic Views to Power BI	✅	✅
Excel live connection (MDX/DAX)	✅	✅
Snowflake RBAC passthrough	✅	✅
Adaptive aggregate cache	✅	✅
Snowflake Native App (single DDL deploy)	✅	✅
Time intelligence (YOY, MTD, retail calendar, leap-year)	Limited	✅
Advanced Power BI (composite models, field parameters, DirectQuery)	—	✅
Model hierarchies and folders	—	✅
Calculation groups	—	✅
Advanced server-side MDX and DAX	—	✅
Tableau, Looker, Google Sheets connectors	—	✅
MCP server for AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, custom)	—	✅
AtScale Design Center (visual modeling UI)	—	✅
Multi-model governance and shared lineage	—	✅
CI/CD-friendly composable semantics	—	✅
Git-backed version control and audit capabilities	—	✅
Audit logs, lineage, metric certification	—	✅
Role-based access control beyond Snowflake RBAC	—	✅
User-defined aggregations	—	✅
Multi-warehouse (Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift)	—	✅
Customer-managed deployment (VPC/SPCS)	—	✅

The AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint when you’re standardized on Snowflake, using or adopting Snowflake Semantic Views, and need governed access to those metrics in Power BI and Excel.

Expand to AtScale Enterprise for Snowflake when requirements grow to include multiple BI tools, advanced time intelligence, fiscal calendars, complex Power BI modeling, AI agent connectivity, multi-warehouse environments, or enterprise-scale governance and version control.

Both editions share one semantic foundation. Moving from AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views to Enterprise requires no data migration and no redefinition of the models your team has already built.

See the AtScale for Snowflake Semantic Views XMLA Endpoint in action at snowflake.atscale.com.