Time Travel

Time Travel is the Lakehouse's historical data access and recovery mechanism, allowing you to query the data state of a table at any historical point in time, or roll back a table to a previous version.

What You Can Do

Capability	Description
Query historical data	View the data state of a table at a specific point in time
Recover accidentally deleted data	Roll back a table to a version before the erroneous operation
Recover dropped tables	Restore a dropped table using `UNDROP TABLE`
Audit data changes	View the historical version list of a table

Quick Example

-- Query data at a specific time yesterday SELECT * FROM orders TIMESTAMP AS OF '2024-01-15 10:00:00'; -- View the historical versions of a table DESC HISTORY orders; -- Roll back a table to a specified version RESTORE TABLE orders TO TIMESTAMP AS OF '2024-01-15 10:00:00'; -- Recover a dropped table UNDROP TABLE orders;

⚠️ TIMESTAMP AS OF only accepts literal constants and does not support expressions like NOW() - INTERVAL 1 DAY.

Data Retention Configuration

The historical data retention period for Time Travel is controlled by data_retention_days, with a default of 1 day and a maximum of 90 days. Historical versions beyond the retention period cannot be accessed.

-- Set the data retention days for a table ALTER TABLE orders SET data_retention_days = 7;

Time Travel

What You Can Do

Quick Example

Data Retention Configuration

Related Documentation