I need help in figuring out the date conversion logic in Snowflake. The documentation isn't clear enough on this.
In SQL Server, I would try
SELECT CONVERT(DATE, '20200730', 101)
and it gives me '07/30/2020'.
If I try the following in Snowflake,
to_varchar('20200730'::date, 'mm/dd/yyyy')
it gives me '08/22/1970'. Why would it give an entire different date? Need help in getting the logic with the correct date.
The issue with what you are doing is that you are assuming that Snowflake is converting your string of '20200730'::DATE to 2020-07-03. It's not. You need to specify your input format of a date. So, 2 options based on your question being a bit vague:
If you have a string in a table and you wish to transform that into a date and then present it back as a formatted string:
SELECT TO_VARCHAR(TO_DATE('20200730','YYYYMMDD'),'MM/DD/YYYY');
--07/30/2020
If the field in the table is already a date, then you just need to apply the TO_VARCHAR() piece directly against that field.
Unlike SQL Server, Snowflake stores date fields in the same format regardless of what you provide it. You need to use the TO_VARCHAR in order to format that date in a different way...or ALTER SESSION SET DATE_OUTPUT_FORMAT will also work.