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Querying historical data with Time Travel

Snowy Peak's overnight batch job loaded 2 cancelled accounts into the subscriptions table. The data team wants to compare the current row count with what it was just before the batch ran. Snowflake's Time Travel makes this possible without any external backup.

The snowy_peak.subscriptions table has columns subscription_id, user_email, plan, status, start_date, and monthly_fee. The session variable $snapshot_ts holds the timestamp captured just before the batch update ran.

This exercise is part of the course

Snowflake Architecture

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Exercise instructions

  • Use AT (TIMESTAMP => ...) to query snowy_peak.subscriptions as it was before the batch update. Use the session variable $snapshot_ts as the timestamp.
  • Count the rows as pre_update_count to confirm how many subscriptions existed before the 2 cancelled accounts were added.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

-- Count subscriptions before the overnight batch update
SELECT COUNT(*) AS pre_update_count
FROM snowy_peak.subscriptions
AT (___ => ___);
Edit and Run Code