Sherpa of Data

Author: Kevin

  • Odd things found when working with data

    Odd things found when working with data

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    Kevin
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    Sometimes, you’ll find all sorts of craziness when you’re working with data. Especially if you don’t expect there to be any craziness. Let me show you what I mean by a story of what I had happen just this week. In mapping some data from one database to another, I was asked to do the…

  • Even more Great Queries Using Query History

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    In our last post, we talked about some of my favorite queries I use in Snowflake to see various items of interest – such as finding the worst-performing queries. For today’s post, though, I want to talk about performance tuning. Yes, you read that right. We’re going to use query history to do some fun…

  • Some Great Queries Using the Query History

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    Now that we know so much about getting data from Snowflake using the query history, we should be able to get all kinds of data that will be helpful for us. In the next few queries, I want to provide some queries I use that should make your Snowflake usage a bit more useful. The…

  • Even more Query History in Snowflake

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    In previous posts, we have discussed differing ways of getting at the query history. In those posts, we discussed getting that data by the session or by a specific user. Today, I want to examine another way of getting to that data. This new way – is by warehouse. I have tried to set up…

  • Querying History By Sessions in Snowflake

    Querying History By Sessions in Snowflake

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    Last time, we talked about a query using the Query_History_By_User table function in Snowflake. This time, I want to discuss a similar table function named Query_History_By_Session. Thankfully, it works in a very similar fashion to Query_History_By_User. Yes, it shows the same information as Query_History_By_User, so I am not displaying it here. By the table function…

  • Cool Items in Snowflake that Aren’t in SQL Server

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    Yes, I know. The name of today’s post is certainly clickbait. But it’s true! There are so many things you can do in Snowflake that may – or may not – be possible in SQL Server, at least not without several tricks and possibly low-level querying. So, let’s start shall we? What did I run?…

  • Common Table Expressions Can Be A Good Thing

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    Kevin
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    Most of our coding these days has Common Table Expressions, also known as CTEs. If not, you’re either working on an older version of SQL Server or you haven’t been introduced to this piece of goodness. CTEs can make reading SQL queries a lot easier if the logic is convoluted. For example, let’s use the…

  • That’s Just NOT Right

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    Today, I want to talk about the keyword NOT in SQL Server. It can be your friend or your worst enemy depending upon how you use it. Let’s delve into some examples of what I’m talking about and how it’s easy for people to mess it up. Let’s say we have a table named DataTable.…

  • Basic Analysis of Data with Snowflake

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    Now and again, you’ll be asked to do some basic analysis of your data in Snowflake. Now by “basic analysis,” I mean for each column tell how many rows are populated, what’s the largest and smallest value in the column, etc… Some of you will want to review each and every column of every table…

  • Scrutinizing the Data in All of our tables

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    Today, I was working with SQL Server to get row counts from several tables so I thought I’d be smart and work with some functions in SQL Server to make it smarter / easier. Now, if I am truly only getting “straight” row counts from these tables, I would be able to create a query…