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The context selector is the pill-shaped button in the platform’s top navigation that shows your current execution context. Use it to switch between data planes and choose the compute pool your queries run on.
The context selector replaces the previous “Data Plane” dropdown, pairing compute pool selection with data plane selection in a single control.
The selector previously carried Database and Schema columns. Both only ever offered DEFAULT, so they have been removed — there is nothing to set in their place, and queries resolve the database and schema from the data plane as they always did.

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Prerequisites

  • A Narrative account with access to at least one data plane

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Reading the current context

The context selector displays your current settings as a segmented pill button in the top navigation:

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Changing your execution context

1

Open the context selector

Click the pill button in the top navigation to open the context flyout. The flyout displays two columns—one for each dimension of your execution context.
2

Select a data plane

Click a data plane in the first column. This resets the compute pool column, since the pools on offer depend on the selected data plane.
3

Select a compute pool

Click a compute pool in the second column. The available options depend on your data plane’s provider—see Compute Pools for details on each type.
4

Confirm your choices

Click Accept in the footer to apply your selections and close the flyout. Nothing is committed until you accept.

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Shortcuts

If the compute pool column has only one option, the context selector fills it with that single row automatically. When a data plane offers just one pool, picking the plane is enough — the second column settles on its only choice and you can accept immediately. A data plane that exposes no pool of its own shows a single DEFAULT row. Selecting it leaves the choice to the data plane, which runs the query on whichever pool it treats as default.

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Canceling

Click Cancel in the footer, or click anywhere outside the flyout, to discard your changes. Your previous execution context remains active.

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Common scenarios

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Single data plane user

If your account has access to only one data plane, the context selector auto-selects it for you. You may never need to interact with the context selector—your context is set automatically with sensible defaults.

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Switching compute pools for a production query

If you’ve been running exploratory queries on a shared compute pool, switch to a dedicated pool before running production workloads:
  1. Click the context selector
  2. Keep your current data plane selected
  3. Select Dedicated in the compute pool column
  4. Click Accept
Your subsequent queries will use dedicated compute resources until you switch back.

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Selecting a Snowflake warehouse for a query

If your Snowflake data plane has multiple registered warehouses (compute pools), you can choose which one to use:
  1. Click the context selector
  2. Keep your Snowflake data plane selected
  3. Select the warehouse you want in the compute pool column
  4. Click Accept
This is useful when you have warehouses sized for different workloads—for example, a small warehouse for quick lookups and a larger one for heavy data processing.

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Working across multiple data planes

If your organization has multiple data planes (for example, a Narrative-hosted plane and a customer Snowflake instance), use the context selector to switch between them. Remember that datasets, queries, and other objects are scoped to the selected data plane—switching data planes changes what’s visible across the platform.
On viewports narrower than 1400px, the pill compacts to show just the data plane name to fit the top bar. Clicking it still opens the full two-column flyout.

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Related content

Execution Context

Understand how data plane and compute pool work together

Compute Pools

Learn about dedicated, shared, and default compute pools

Data Planes

Where your data lives and is processed