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What does 'time travel' mean in Snowflake?

🟢 Easy Conceptual Junior level
1Times asked
Oct 2026Last seen
Oct 2026First seen

💡 Model Answer

Time travel in Snowflake is a feature that lets you query, restore, or clone data as it existed at a point in the past. Snowflake keeps a history of data changes for a retention period (up to 90 days for Standard accounts, 1 year for Enterprise and higher). You can use the AT or AS OF clause in a SELECT statement, e.g., SELECT * FROM my_table AT (TIMESTAMP => '2023-01-01 00:00:00'); or restore a deleted table with the RESTORE command. Time travel also powers cloning, which creates a lightweight copy of a table that references the historical data. This feature is useful for point‑in‑time recovery, auditing, and debugging data issues.

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