Data Types and Functions in Snowflake

Overview

Learn Snowflake data types and functions to manipulate text, numbers, and dates while building custom functions and pivot tables.

Nail down the fundamentals of Snowflake, starting with data types. You'll gain an understanding of the different data types that Snowflake can store, and the operations that can be performed on that data. Once you've developed an understanding of Snowflake's different data types, you'll begin to manipulate and transform that data with functions like TRIM, AVG, SUM, and DATEDIFF . You'll even define your own functions to customize and streamline data manipulation.

Once you're comfortable manipulating and transforming data, you'll add a few handy tools to your tool belt. You'll pick up the best ways to flatten semi-structured data and build multiple common table expressions. Before you put the finishing touches on this course, you'll master the art of pivoting data in Snowflake.

Syllabus

Data types

Before you can change the world using Snowflake, you need to know the type of data you'll be working with. You'll start with text data, learning to use it in queries and define columns, plus discover how to retrieve column details from any table. Then you'll master numeric data types and date/time data, understanding precision, scale, and how to convert strings to timestamps.

Manipulating Data

Now that you know your Snowflake data inside-and-out, it's time to manipulate and transform it. You'll begin with text data manipulation using TRIM, SPLIT, and CONCAT, then master numeric operations like arithmetic and summary measures with SUM and AVG. You'll explore timestamp transformations by extracting components like year or hours, calculating intervals between dates, and create your own custom Snowflake functions (UDFs) to implement personalized logic.

Advanced Snowflake techniques

In this final chapter, you'll crank the heat up with Snowflake's more advanced functionality. You'll start with VARIANT data types (semi-structured data), learning to parse top-level and nested data using dot-notation and bracket-notation, then master common table expressions (CTEs) by building and using multiple CTEs. Finally, you'll wrap up by creating pivoted tables using the PIVOT keyword to transform data into an easy-to-digest format, ready for reports and analysis.