How to Use LIKE operator in Snowflake?

   Are you looking for details of what is collate in Snowflake? Are you also interested in knowing what is the purpose of collate and how to use it? If so, then you reached the right place. We will understand how to use collate to achieve LIKE functionality in Snowflake. In this article, we will more about collate or collation in Snowflake.

A) What is collate?

          The collate function in Snowflake allows specifying alternative rules for comparing strings.

B) What is the purpose of collate in Snowflake?

        The collate function in Snowflake is used to compare and sort the data. The comparison and sorting will be based on a particular language or other user-specified rules.

         The text strings in Snowflake are stored using UTF-8 character set. Comparing based on Unicode will not provide the desired output because of the following reasons :

          1. The special character in a language does no sort based on the language standards.

          2. In case we would like to achieve sorting based on special rules .e.g case insensitive sort.

C) What type of rules can be used with collate in Snowflake

     Here is a list of rules that can be used with collate 

     1. Different character sets for different language

     2. To achieve case insensitive comparisons 

    3.  Accent sensitivity e.g a,á,ä

    4 . Punctuation sensitivity e.g P-Q-R and PQR

    5. Sorting based on the first letter in the strings.

    6. Trimming leading and trailing spaces and then sorting

     7. Other options can be implemented based on business needs.

D) Where to use collate in Snowflake SQL?

       1. Simple comparison in where clause

              WHERE  FIELD1= FIELD2

        2. Join condition

              ON  EMP. EMP_NM =MANAGER.MNGR_NM

         3. Sorting condition

               ORDER BY FIELD 1

         4. Aggregation condition

                GROUP BY

          5. Aggregate functions

                  MAX ( FIELD1)

          6. Scaler functions

                 LEAST (FIELD1, FIELD2, FIELD3)

         7. Data clustering conditions

                CLUSTER BY (FIELD1)

     There are other several usages of collate in SQL, however above mentioned are commonly used.

E) How to use collate with LIKE operator

      here is an example of collate using like operation

     SELECT * FROM EMP WHERE COLLATE (NAME,") Like%ABC%

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