Designer Issue: Snowflake Data Stream Out Tool Returning Strange Characters

[James]

Hello,

I am experiencing an issue while reading data out of snowflake. A bunch of strange characters are appearing in my outstream - I can assure you these characters were not written in, but for whatever reason, the characters appear in the actual snowflake table itself, as well as when I read it in Alteryx Designer. 

For more background: I have a process in which I basically append a brand new set of data to snowflake each time I run my workflow.

• The process is simple on the surface: it takes the current data from the current run and unions it to the existing data already present in snowflake, and then overwrites the existing snowflake table so that it now contains all the old data + data from the most current run.
• The catch is that, if I have already run the same workflow earlier in the same day, then I remove the data from earlier in the same day from the union process. The goal is to make sure that there is only one set of records being appended to the snowflake table per day.

The issue arises in the left-most browse tool, pictured in the image below. When browsing the data that is coming OUT of snowflake via a connect In-DB tool and then a data stream out tool, I am noticing that many of the records have been altered and are not the same as when they were written in originally. 

When I write the data IN, I am 100% confident that these symbols are not present in the data.

Additionally, I am also noticing that data appears to be shifting within the results. I feel like this is an issue with a codepage or a delimiter or something, but I just don't understand what is causing it. 

[apathetichell]

Can you share a screen grab of your select tool? It looks like your dates are not dates - also - are you writing to a temp table using Datastream In - and then appending using Write In-DB (ie why are you using both?)

[James]

My dates are strings and are not in AYX date format. They are in regular MM/DD/YYYY format and are saved as strings on purpose.

I am writing, and then overwriting (on future runs) to a temp table using datastream in. I am not appending anything. I was just explaining that what I am doing essentially functions like an append, because it's basically just accomplishing the same thing as adding a day's worth of data to the old data each day. 

[simonaubert_bd]

Hello @James 

1/ could you put word on your picture to explain where it's ok and where it's not, please?

2/can you also provide some information about your connection? Like odbc connection parameters, indb connection configuration on alteryx ? (don't forget to hive sensitive information on your screenshot). Your issue looks like this one where it was a codepage issue

https://community.snowflake.com/s/question/0D50Z000090nnC4SAI/snowflake-corrupts-foreign-and-unicode...

3/pro-tip : most of your operations could be done in in-db instead of in-memory (like join, aggregation, union, select.) You should leverage as most as possible your database ressources, not the alteryx one.

Best regards,

Simon

[James]

Thanks for the protip. Please Ignore the black section in the screenshot directly below, it's irrelevant.

Upper section labeled "OK" is the current run's data, no issues with these rows of data even through the union and data appears ok when being written into the snowflake table.

Lower section is the existing data coming out of snowflake - obviously includes all data except for the current run - each record has a timestamp - muchof the data coming OUT of this table is incorrect.

Weirdly, when I run the workflow 2x times or more, today's data obviously starts to come out of the "read" section - and it is always 100% correct. But PRIOR days are usually incorrect. Tomorrow, when I go to run this again, the data from today (3/2) that was correct will no longer be c

[simonaubert_bd · Accepted solution]

Ok, thanks for the informations !

so you use the bulk loader... I think this is here where you issue come from. So two things :
1/have you tried with an odbc loader (it will be **bleep** slower but it's only for test) ? (test new data of course ;) )
2/I may be wrong because I have only an old release right now on my computer but if I look at the documentation here https://help.alteryx.com/20223/designer/snowflake

It seems possible to provide some information about the file you send to SF in bulk mode... like encoding in utf8

3/I should have asked that before but can you also give an example of the correct data ?

Best regards,

Simon