AEP's Snowflake Batch Format Change: What Engineering Teams Need to Do Before June Ends
For: data-engineering-leaders
Angle
AEP changed its Snowflake Batch destination table structure in March 2026, and the legacy column-per-audience format is deprecated at end of June 2026. Data engineering teams running AEP → Snowflake Batch activation pipelines need to migrate to the V2_ table structure before the deadline or production pipelines break. This was a silent product change documented in ExperienceLeague rather than notified by email — many teams haven't seen it. Additional constraints include a 7-day TTL on exported data and Azure Private Link incompatibility that compound the migration planning.
Key decision this helps with
Whether AEP → Snowflake Batch pipelines have been migrated to the V2 column-per-attribute format, and whether the 7-day TTL and Azure Private Link constraints affect the downstream data retention architecture
Tradeoffs the article will map
- Early migration (now): higher engineering effort near-term but no production-pipeline risk during campaign-busy month-end close
- Late migration (closer to June deadline): lower near-term investment but risk of broken pipelines if the deadline is missed during an active campaign cycle
- Composable CDP architecture alternative context: organizations using Hightouch or Census/Fivetran Activations to write directly to Snowflake via reverse-ETL have no equivalent migration risk — AEP pipeline owners face this migration while composable architectures don't, which is relevant context for evaluators comparing operational overhead
Open questions / uncertainties
- Whether the 7-day TTL on V2_ exported data creates downstream retention issues for teams that assumed longer Snowflake persistence from the AEP Batch export
- Whether Azure Private Link incompatibility in the V2 format affects teams currently routing AEP → Snowflake via Private Link, and whether those teams have a migration path
Knowledge-graph nodes this draws from
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