allow read-only feature while using snowflake as (sql) registry host.

[shuchu]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Based on the community user's (Zvonimir Cikojevic) feedback, we want to create a read-only feature for snowflake user who only can do READ to the registry on snowflake.

Hi guys! I hope I’m in the right channel.
I have Feast deployed on Snowflake and I’d like to limit the write access to the feature store.
The idea was to have a Snowflake role that only has Read privileges to the feature store schema (where the feast registry and our batch sources are deployed).
However, when assuming this role and running
store = feast.FeatureStore()
I get unauthorized error since the first SQL query Feast runs is CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS DB.SCHEMA.DATA_SOURCES…
Does this mean that anyone who wishes to query the feature store has to have RW access?
Can you help me understand the reasoning behind this or did I miss something?
Thanks!

Yes, Feast tries to create registry Snowflake tables if they don't exist. I've created the registry when I first ran feast apply. This block of code always executed

feast/sdk/python/feast/infra/registry/snowflake.py

Line 128 in 9df2224

sql_function_file = f"{os.path.dirname(feast.__file__)}/infra/utils/snowflake/registry/snowflake_table_creation.sql"

when I run store = FeatureStore() .
In my case, this is unnecessary since I've (as a feature store admin) already created the registry.
I'd like to enable users to just have the ability to query the feature store - and not give them the privileges to write to the feature store tables (if they're not developers/admins).

Describe the solution you'd like
(TBD)

Describe alternatives you've considered
(TBD)

Additional context
(TBD)

[shuchu]

Zvonimir, please be aware that this PR only changes the behavior of the initialization of the class: SnowflakeRegistry().

The default design of FEAST Registry allows all users to have modification privileges for their own "project", which means they can insert or delete records (with specified project_id) from FEAST Registry tables. If I go back to your original usage scenario, maybe we can create a dedicated (non-critical) Registry database for those "READ-only" users, and let them play free (or crash it :p)