Categories:

Information Schema , Table functions

EXTERNAL_TABLE_FILES

This table function can be used to query information about the staged data files included in the metadata for a specified external table.

Syntax

EXTERNAL_TABLE_FILES(
      TABLE_NAME => '<string>' )

Arguments

Required:

TABLE_NAME => 'string'

A string specifying an external table name.

Usage notes

  • Returns results for the external table owner (i.e. the role with the OWNERSHIP privilege on the external table), or a higher role, or a role that has the USAGE privilege on the database and schema that contain an external table and any privilege on the external table.
  • The table function cannot retrieve metadata about staged data files until the external table is refreshed (i.e. synched) to include the data files in its metadata.
  • When calling an Information Schema table function, the session must have an INFORMATION_SCHEMA schema in use or the function name must be fully-qualified. For more details, see Snowflake Information Schema.

Output

The function returns the following columns:

Column NameData TypeDescription
FILE_NAMETEXTName of source file and relative path to the staged file
REGISTERED_ONTIMESTAMP_LTZTimestamp when the file metadata was added to an external table (i.e. when the external table metadata was refreshed with the file details)
FILE_SIZENUMBERSize of the file (in bytes)
LAST_MODIFIEDTIMESTAMP_LTZTimestamp when the file was last updated in the stage
ETAGHEXETag header for the file
MD5HEXMD5 checksum for the file

Examples

Retrieve the metadata stored for all data files referenced by the mytable external table:

select *
from table(information_schema.external_table_files(TABLE_NAME=>'MYTABLE'));