Variant data type
A variant data type stores semistructured values whose fields or structures may vary between records.
Snowflake Data Engineering
The VARIANT data type is a Snowflake type for storing semi-structured values.
- How it is used
- Stores raw JSON and other semistructured payloads before their fields and nested arrays are transformed into relational staging data.
- How deep it goes
- Explains storage, key selection, casts, and repeated LATERAL FLATTEN operations, without detailing VARIANT internals.
- Examples
- Uses Park Inn bakery orders and food-delivery orders containing nested delivery dates, items, quantities, filenames, and load timestamps.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Snowflake SQL to stage JSON, extract typed fields, and flatten nested arrays into relational rows.
Read how Snowflake Data Engineering explains variant data type →
Architecting an Apache Iceberg Lakehouse
A variant data type represents semistructured values whose fields or shapes may vary across records.
- How it is used
- Absorbs evolving source attributes within ingestion pipelines while preserving governance for structure that is already known.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the role of variants and outlines schema-alignment decisions, but stops short of implementation syntax or storage internals.
- Examples
- Uses event streams, APIs, logs, and new-field routing as concrete ingestion scenarios.
- What you can do after
- Operate ingestion pipelines that validate incoming schemas and choose extension, variant routing, or compatible casting.
Read how Architecting an Apache Iceberg Lakehouse explains variant data type →
Related concepts
- JSONused by · JSON is a standardized, language-independent text format for representing structured data using objects, arrays, strings, numbers, Boolean values, and null.
- FLATTENused by · FLATTEN is a Snowflake table function that expands elements of a semi-structured array or object into separate rows.
- semi-structured dataused by · Semi-structured data has organizational markers or partial structure but does not conform to a rigid, uniform schema.
- user-defined functionproduced by · A user-defined function is a programmer-authored function that performs custom computation when invoked by an application, query, or data-processing system.
- arrayhas part · An array is an indexed, ordered collection of elements arranged in one or more dimensions, with elements accessed by position.
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