Sometimes, you’ll need to create functions that do a particular thing. They’re not always pretty. Some of them look like they should have been thrown out with the bathwater. Unlike SQL Server, user-defined functions in Snowflake can be done in several different languages. They can be done in Java, JavaScript, Python, Scala, or plain-old SQL.…… Continue reading Creating a new function in Snowflake

When you’re trying to complete a task for the business, the most important thing is to get the data right. Second most important task is to get the data quickly. One of the ways we can get better at speed is to attempt several slightly different ways that can get you (hopefully) the same data.…… Continue reading Different ways to get to the same thing

When we’re working with fields that have websites in them, one of the things that we should be doing with them is to double-check that they’re well-formed and usable. Thankfully, Snowflake has a function just for that. With the PARSE_URL function, we can check out if everything is properly formed – meaning that we have…… Continue reading Check Out these URLs with Snowflake Functions

Sometimes you need to check one field to see if you want to display another field. Sometimes you show one of two fields depending on the value in yet another field. Sometimes you just need to relax… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxS_DvDiuRI Today, though, we’re going to go thru a myriad of functions that you can use in Snowflake…… Continue reading In CASE You Want to Use Logic in Snowflake

Figuring out the number of years or months between 2 dates shouldn’t be hard. For some reason though, for a lot of database systems it is. Take, for example, SQL Server. If I want to know the number of months between 1/1/2023 and 7/4/2023, it’s not too hard. A simple DATEDIFF function and we’re golden.…… Continue reading Figuring out the Number of Months Between Days

By the title of this post, you’re thinking “Ho hum. Sherpa will tell us about the stupid MIN and MAX functions in Snowflake and how great they are.” Well, they are great. Let’s not kid ourselves about that one. SELECT department_id, MIN(employee_id) AS FirstEmp FROM public.employees GROUP BY department_id ORDER BY department_id; This simply tells…… Continue reading Getting the Minimum or Maximum of One Column

Sometimes, you’ll be asked to show the next Friday after a given date in a report. Sometimes, it’s the next Monday. Let’s work thru how to do it in both SQL Server and Snowflake for comparison… One of the two ways we’ll go over in SQL Server is using the DateFirst operator. This operator actually…… Continue reading Next Friday Will Be Here Before You Know it

In SQL Server, we’re used to finding the end of the month via a few different methods. We can always use the DateAdd and DateDiff functions to get our data – which sometimes takes a bit of work – or we can use the EOMonth function. Notice that the DateAdd and DateDiff functions return a…… Continue reading This is the end… of the month.

There are a lot of things that can be said about the keyword DISTINCT within Snowflake. One of them you’re probably used to, and one of them you probably aren’t. SELECT DISTINCT DEPARTMENT_ID FROM public.employees; In this case, DISTINCT is simply ensuring we have unique data. If you remove the DISTINCT keyword, the version I’m…… Continue reading Distinctity. Yes, it’s a thing.

When you’re working with a database, it’s very hard to not deal with strings at some point in your journey. There are lots of different functions that you will be working with when you’re working with strings. Today, I want to go over some of the basic ones that you’ll use in Snowflake. The first…… Continue reading More Fun Dealing with Strings