Categories:

String & binary functions (Compression/Decompression)

COMPRESS¶

Compresses the input string or binary value with a compression method.

See also:

DECOMPRESS_BINARY , DECOMPRESS_STRING

Syntax¶

COMPRESS(<input>, <method>)
Copy

Arguments¶

Required:

input

A BINARY or string value (or expression) to be compressed.

method

A string with compression method and optional compression level. Supported methods are:

  • SNAPPY.

  • ZLIB.

  • ZSTD.

  • BZ2.

The compression level is specified in parentheses, for example: zlib(1). The compression level is a non-negative integer. 0 means default level (same as omitting the compression level). The compression level is ignored if the method doesn’t support compression levels.

Returns¶

A BINARY with compressed data.

Usage notes¶

  • If the compression method is unknown or invalid, the query fails.

  • The compression method name (e.g. ZLIB) is case-insensitive.

  • Not all inputs are compressible. For very short or difficult-to-compress input values, the output value might be the same length as, or even slightly longer than, the input value.

Examples¶

The example below shows how to use the COMPRESS function with the SNAPPY compression method.

The output of the function is BINARY, but SNOWSQL displays the output as a string of hexadecimal characters for readability.

SELECT COMPRESS('Snowflake', 'SNAPPY');
+---------------------------------+
| COMPRESS('SNOWFLAKE', 'SNAPPY') |
|---------------------------------|
| 0920536E6F77666C616B65          |
+---------------------------------+
Copy
Language: English