Sherpa of Data

Tag: Snowflake

  • Removing Objects Is Not So Simple

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    Kevin
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    When you’re working between SQL Server and Snowflake, there can be a lot of crossover that may make you forget what system you’re working in. Sometimes it’s close, but not close enough. Today, let’s go over something that should be rather simple – removing old objects that we shouldn’t need any longer. In SQL Server,…

  • Making Python work with Snowflake For Fun and Pleasure

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    Kevin
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    As we did last week in our post on Creating a new function in Snowflake, I want to talk about some of the scripts and languages I use to make my life easier in Snowflake. As the site LearnPython says: “Today, Python is one of the most popular programming languages because of its beginner-friendly syntax, efficiency, and…

  • Creating a new function in Snowflake

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    Kevin
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    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.…

  • Different ways to get to the same thing

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    Kevin
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    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.…

  • Check Out these URLs with Snowflake Functions

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    Kevin
    in

    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…

  • In CASE You Want to Use Logic in Snowflake

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    Kevin
    in

    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… Today, though, we’re going to go thru a myriad of functions that you can use in Snowflake to…

  • Figuring out the Number of Months Between Days

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    Kevin
    in

    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.…

  • Getting the Minimum or Maximum of One Column

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    Kevin
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    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. This simply tells us the first employee id in the employees table for each department. Same…

  • Next Friday Will Be Here Before You Know it

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    Kevin
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    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…

  • This is the end… of the month.

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    Kevin
    in

    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…