Data types

Important Notice: Migration of Documentation Website

Please be advised that our documentation website is currently undergoing a migration to a new platform. To ensure you have access to the most up-to-date information, we kindly request that you visit our new documentation website located at:

Official Snowflake Snowconvert Documentation

For any immediate assistance or if you encounter any issues, please contact our support team at [email protected].

Thank you for your understanding.

Snowflake supports most basic SQL data types (with some restrictions) for use in columns, local variables, expressions, parameters, and any other appropriate/suitable locations.

Binary Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
BINARY	BINARY
VARBINARY (synonyms: BYTEA, RAW, BINARY VARYING)	BINARY (synonyms: VARBINARY, BINARY VARYING)
LONG VARBINARY	BINARY Notes: Vertica's LONG VARBINARY supports up to 32,000,000 bytes (~30.5MB), while Snowflake's BINARY is limited to (8,388,608 bytes) 8MB. This size difference means you might need an alternative solution for mapping larger LONG VARBINARY data.

Boolean Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
BOOLEAN	BOOLEAN

Character Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
CHAR	CHAR
VARCHAR	VARCHAR
LONG VARCHAR	VARCHAR Notes: Vertica's LONG VARCHAR supports up to 32,000,000 bytes (~30.5MB), while Snowflake's VARCHAR is limited to 16,777,216 bytes (16MB). This size difference means you might need an alternative solution for mapping larger LONG VARCHAR data.

Date/Time Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
DATE	DATE Notes: Be aware of Snowflake's recommended year range (1582-9999).
TIME	TIME
TIME WITH TIMEZONE (TIMETZ)	TIME Notes: TIME data type in Snowflake does not persist this timezone attribute. SSC-FDM-0005 is added.
TIMESTAMP	TIMESTAMP
DATETIME	DATETIME
SMALLDATETIME	TIMESTAMP_NTZ
TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE (TIMESTAMPTZ)	TIMESTAMP_TZ
TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE	TIMESTAMP_NTZ

Approximate Numeric Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
DOUBLE PRECISION	DOUBLE PRECISION
FLOAT	FLOAT
FLOAT8	FLOAT8
REAL	REAL

Exact Numeric Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
INTEGER	INTEGER
INT	INT
BIGINT	BIGINT
INT8	INTEGER
SMALLINT	SMALLINT
TINYINT	TINYINT
DECIMAL	DECIMAL
NUMERIC	NUMERIC
NUMBER	NUMBER
MONEY	NUMERIC

Spatial Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
GEOMETRY	GEOMETRY
GEOGRAPHY	GEOGRAPHY

UUID Data Type

Vertica	Snowflake
UUID	VARCHAR(36) Notes: Snowflake doesn't have a native UUID data type. Instead, UUIDs are usually stored as either VARCHAR(36) (for string format) or BINARY(16) (for raw byte format). You can generate RFC 4122-compliant UUIDs in Snowflake using the built-in UUID_STRING() function.