🚀 5 Snowflake SQL Features Every Data Professional Should Know in 2025

Snowflake continues to enhance its SQL capabilities, introducing features that simplify queries and improve readability. Here are five standout additions that data engineers and analysts should take advantage of right now.

1. GROUP BY ALL

The GROUP BY ALL clause automatically includes all non-aggregated columns from the SELECT statement in the GROUP BY clause. This eliminates the need to manually list every column, making your queries cleaner and easier to maintain.

SELECT region, product_category, SUM(sales_amount) AS total_sales
FROM sales
GROUP BY ALL;

📚 Official docs – GROUP BY ALL

2. BOOLAND_AGG

BOOLAND_AGG returns TRUE if all non-NULL Boolean expressions in a group evaluate to TRUE. If any expression is FALSE, the result is FALSE. It’s especially useful for checking completeness or validity across grouped data.

SELECT department, BOOLAND_AGG(is_active) AS all_active
FROM employees
GROUP BY department;

📚 Official docs – BOOLAND_AGG

3. Trailing Commas in SELECT Lists

Snowflake now allows trailing commas in SELECT statements, improving readability and reducing the chance of syntax errors when adding or rearranging columns.

SELECT
  employee_id,
  name,
  department,
FROM employees;

📚 Official docs – SELECT syntax

4. SELECT * EXCLUDE

This feature lets you select all columns except the ones you explicitly want to exclude. It’s a game changer for working with wide tables where you only need to omit a few sensitive or irrelevant columns.

SELECT * EXCLUDE (salary, ssn)
FROM employees;

📚 Official docs – SELECT * EXCLUDE

5. QUALIFY Clause

QUALIFY allows you to filter on the result of window functions without needing to wrap your query in a subquery or CTE. It’s a clean, intuitive way to write analytics-style queries.

SELECT employee_id, department
FROM employees
QUALIFY ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY department ORDER BY hire_date) = 1;

📚 Official docs – QUALIFY

These modern features make Snowflake SQL easier to write, safer to maintain, and more expressive for analytics and engineering alike. Try incorporating them into your workflows today!