Laterally a new move

In Snowflake, you can do something akin to an APPLY, but not. That, my friends, is a LATERAL join. According to Snowflake documentation, this type of join “allows an inline view to reference columns from the table expression that precedes the inline view.” Yes, that’s gibberish. Let’s show what you’re doing. To test this out,…… Continue reading Laterally a new move

Flattening out data in SnowFlake

Sometimes you have to work with different kinds of data in Snowflake – just like in most databases. Today I want to work with some JSON – the same basic premise works for XML, Arrays, and other variants. SELECT * FROM TABLE(FLATTEN(input => parse_json(‘[3089, NULL, 217]’))); So, first, let’s go thru the parse_json portion. Notice…… Continue reading Flattening out data in SnowFlake

Sound of Silence in Snowflake

One of those functions that can be helpful – in the right circumstances – is SOUNDEX. If you hop into the Wayback Machine with Sherman, Mr. Peabody, and me, I created a blog post about this very subject – found here. https://youtu.be/pm_1L27JGFg In Snowflake, the SOUNDEX function works exactly the same way: For all the…… Continue reading Sound of Silence in Snowflake

Inserting an Insert into Snowflake

Whenever I say the keyword INSERT in conjunction with databases, we – as data developers – automatically think that we’re going to be putting data into a table (or multiple tables with Snowflake – see here). With Snowflake, that isn’t always true. Now, you’re probably saying to yourself “Sherpa has obviously lost his/her mind. Who…… Continue reading Inserting an Insert into Snowflake