Managing timestamp data

The recipe will provide you with an example of how files containing timestamp data should be managed using the timestamp functions available in Snowflake, as well as how formats are managed for the standard ISO format and non-standard formats. This recipe shall also provide you with some useful examples of how to avoid mixups that may occur if a source system provides inconsistent date and time data, or different zones are involved, as well as how to apply time zones using session.

Getting ready

Note that this recipe's steps can be run either in the Snowflake web UI or the SnowSQL command-line client.

How to do it…

Let's look at some practical examples of common date and time queries and calculations. We shall start with date and time data types, followed by timestamps. We shall investigate how time zones can be handled in Snowflake. In practical scenarios, data is received in text files, which will contain date and time data available...