The IS_ROLE_IN_SESSION function is used to set up column-level masking using a role in the hierarchy of the current user. Column-level masking is a feature in Snowflake that allows users to apply dynamic data masking policies to specific columns based on the roles of the users who access them. The IS_ROLE_IN_SESSION function takes a role name as an argument and returns true if the role is in the current user’s session, or false otherwise. The function can be used in a masking policy expression to determine whether to mask or unmask a column value based on the role of the user. For example:

CREATE OR REPLACE MASKING POLICY email_mask AS (val string) RETURNS string -> CASE WHEN IS_ROLE_IN_SESSION(‘HR’) THEN val ELSE REGEXP_REPLACE(val, ‘(.).(.@.)’, ‘\1****\2’) END;

In this example, the IS_ROLE_IN_SESSION function is used to create a masking policy for an email column. The masking policy returns the original email value if the user has the HR role in their session, or returns a masked email value with asterisks if not.