SELECT INTO syntax for Snowflake Datawarehouse

Question

I believe there's an SELECT INTO-like syntax in Snowflake, but I am unable to find documentation or examples to use it.

CREATE TABLE raw_data (
    Timestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL, 
    Date DATE NOT NULL, 
    UserID STRING,
    Address STRING,
    Phone STRING,
    Value INTEGER
);

COPY INTO raw_data from 's3://my_bucket'
CREDENTIALS=(AWS_KEY_ID='XXXXX' AWS_SECRET_KEY='XXXX')
ON_ERROR=CONTINUE;

CREATE TABLE summary (
    Date DATE NOT NULL,
    UserID STRING,
    Value INTEGER
);

INSERT INTO summary 
SELECT Date, UserID, Value FROM raw_data

The above works, but rather than defining the table summary I want to SELECT INTO and have the SQL parser create the table for me.

Answer 1

You can use Create Table AS (CTAS) to accomplish this. In your case it would be:

CREATE TABLE SUMMARY AS
SELECT
  Date
, UserID
, Value
FROM
  raw_data;

Here is an example using no data that I have tested:

create table foo as select $1, $2
from

    values ( 1, 'two' ), ( 3, 'four' ), ( 5, 'six' );

    select * from foo;

Hope this helps!