Snowflake’s Time Travel Feature

Introducing Snowflake’s Time Travel feature is like unlocking the gates to a realm where the past, present, and future of your data converge in a symphony of efficiency and reliability.
Imagine a world where you not only have a snapshot of your data frozen in time, but you can also journey seamlessly through its evolution, witnessing every change, every transformation, and every moment of its existence. This is the power of Snowflake’s Time Travel.
At its core lies the robust foundation of Snapshot Isolation (SI), ensuring that every transaction is granted a consistent view of your database, as if peering through a crystal-clear lens into the heart of your data at the precise moment the transaction began.
But Snowflake doesn’t stop there. With the implementation of Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), your data transcends the boundaries of time itself. Every alteration, every modification, is meticulously preserved, creating a tapestry of versions that weave together to form the rich narrative of your data’s journey.
Picture this: with each write operation – be it an insertion, an update, a deletion, or a merge – Snowflake doesn’t merely overwrite the past, it embraces it, crafting a new chapter in the saga of your data’s story. Every change is encapsulated within its own file, seamlessly integrated into the fabric of your dataset, preserving its integrity and ensuring its accessibility at every turn.
In essence, Snowflake’s Time Travel isn’t just a feature; it’s a portal to a realm where the past is ever-present, the present is fluid, and the future is boundless. It’s the ultimate tool for data exploration, analysis, and discovery, empowering you to navigate the depths of your data with unprecedented clarity and confidence. Welcome to the era of Time Travel with Snowflake – where every moment is an opportunity, and every insight is within reach.

Time travel is a Snowflake feature that displays data at a specific point in time. For example, users use the time travel feature for restoring data when they accidentally update or delete data incorrectly. There are three techniques to go back in time; the first example is below. We have made a mistake with an update statement by forgetting a WHERE clause. However, we will use Time Travel to see the GRADE_PT three minutes previous when data was correct, and all was right in our data world. Time travel up to 90 days with the Enterprise edition or higher. Time travel up to 1 day for the standard edition.

With Snowflake’s time travel feature, there are three techniques for returning in time; the second example is below. We made a mistake with an update statement by forgetting a WHERE clause, so everyone has a first name of ‘Tera-Tom.’ However, we will use Time Travel to see the FIRST_NAME at a specific time when the data is correct.

The example below shows how to make a mistake and use time travel to recover from it.

With Snowflake’s time travel feature, there are three techniques for returning in time; the third example is below. We made a mistake with an update statement by forgetting a WHERE clause. However, we will use Time Travel to return before the UPDATE statement happens.

If you want to see how to federate queries on Snowflake or migrate data to Snowflake in an instant, please check out the Nexus. You can also visit our website at the link below to see 60-second videos of the Nexus in action. Ten videos will show the many brilliant techniques Nexus uses to thrill users.
https://coffingdw.com/sixty-second-feature-videos/
Video 1 – Getting Started
Video 2 – Searching Across Systems
Video 3 – Migrating Data
Video 4 – Join Builder Writes the SQL
Video 5 – Federated Queries
Video 6 – Customizing Your Result Set Viewing
Video 7 – Using Excel
Video 8 – Dragging Answer Sets to Create Tables
Video 9 – Build Analytics Automatically
Video 10 – Analytics From Result Sets