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31 views4 pages

Snowflake 1

snowflake-1

Uploaded by

toppertips.in
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Reference SQL data types reference Vector

Vector data types


This topic describes the vector data types.

Data types
Snowflake supports a single vector data type, VECTOR.

Note
The VECTOR data type is only supported in SQL, the Python connector and the
Snowpark Python library. No other languages are supported.

VECTOR
With the VECTOR data type, Snowflake encodes and processes vectors efficiently.
This data type supports semantic vector search and retrieval applications, such as
RAG-based applications, and common operations on vectors in vector-processing
applications.
To specify a VECTOR type, use the following syntax:

VECTOR( <type>, <dimension> )

Where:
<type> is the Snowflake data type of the elements, which can be 32-bit integers
or 32-bit floating-point numbers.
You can specify one of the following types:
INT
FLOAT
<dimension> is the dimension (length) of the vector. This must be a positive
integer value with a maximum value of 4096.

Note
Direct vector comparisons (e.g. v1 < v2) are byte-wise lexicographic and, while
deterministic, won’t produce results that you’d expect from number
comparisons. So while you can use VECTOR columns in ORDER BY clauses, for
vector comparisons, use the vector similarity functions provided.

The following are examples of valid definitions of vectors:


Define a vector of 256 32-bit floating-point values:

VECTOR(FLOAT, 256)

Define a vector of 16 32-bit integer values:

VECTOR(INT, 16)

The following are examples of invalid definitions of vectors:


A vector definition using an invalid value type:

VECTOR(STRING, 256)

A vector definition using an invalid vector size:

VECTOR(INT, -1)

Vector conversion
This section describes how to convert to and from a VECTOR value. For details on
casting, see Data type conversion.

Converting a value to a VECTOR value


VECTOR values can be explicitly cast from the following types:
ARRAY
Structured ARRAY
Variant containing an ARRAY

Converting a value from a VECTOR value


VECTOR values can be explicitly cast to the following types:
ARRAY
Structured ARRAY

Loading and unloading vector data


Directly loading and unloading a VECTOR column is not supported. For VECTOR
columns, you must load and unload data as an ARRAY and then cast it to a VECTOR
when you use it. To learn how to load and unload ARRAY data types, see Introduction
to Loading Semi-structured Data. A common use case for vectors is to generate a
vector embedding.
The following example shows how to unload a table with a VECTOR column to an
internal stage named mystage :

CREATE TABLE mytable (a VECTOR(float, 3), b VECTOR(float, 3));


INSERT INTO mytable SELECT [1.1,2.2,3]::VECTOR(FLOAT,3), [1,1,1]::VECTOR
INSERT INTO mytable SELECT [1,2.2,3]::VECTOR(FLOAT,3), [4,6,8]::VECTOR(F

COPY INTO @mystage/unload/


FROM (SELECT TO_ARRAY(a), TO_ARRAY(b) FROM mytable);

The following example shows how to load a table from a stage and then cast the
ARRAY columns as VECTOR columns:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE arraytable (a ARRAY, b ARRAY);

COPY INTO arraytable


FROM @mystage/unload/mydata.csv.gz;

SELECT a::VECTOR(FLOAT, 3), b::VECTOR(FLOAT, 3)


FROM arraytable;

Examples
Construct a VECTOR by casting a constant ARRAY:

SELECT [1, 2, 3]::VECTOR(FLOAT, 3) as vec;

Add a column with the VECTOR data type:


ALTER TABLE issues ADD COLUMN issue_vec VECTOR(FLOAT, 768);

UPDATE TABLE issues


SET issue_vec = SNOWFLAKE.CORTEX.EMBED_TEXT_768('e5-base-v2', issue_te

Limitations
There is limited language support for the VECTOR data type. Languages not
represented in this table are not supported.
Snowflake feature Python SQL

UDFs ✔ ✔

UDTFs ✔ ✔

Drivers/Connectors ✔ ✔

Snowpark API ✔

Vectors are not supported in VARIANT columns.


Vectors are not supported as clustering keys.
Server-side binding is not supported. This means that when writing to a VECTOR
column through a Snowflake driver, you must cast the VECTOR values in the
query before running the query.
Vectors are allowed in hybrid tables but not as primary keys or secondary index
keys.
The VECTOR data type is not supported for use with the following Snowflake
features:
Snowflake Scripting Developer Guide
Apache Iceberg™ tables
Search Optimization Service
Snowpipe
Bind variables

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