Amazon Redshift adds Four New Features and Sixteen New SQL Commands and Functions

Posted on: Nov 4, 2014
Amazon Redshift has added a number of features this week and over the past month, including the ability to tag resources and cancel queries from the console, enhancements to data load and unload, and sixteen new SQL commands and functions. Amazon Redshift is a fast, easy-to-use, petabyte-scale data warehouse service that costs as little as $1,000/TB/Year. To get started for free with Amazon Redshift and partner tools, please see our Free Trial page. Resource and Query Management
You can use the Amazon Redshift console to cancel running queries and loads. What's more, you can now use the Amazon Redshift console to tag resources, such as clusters and snapshots. Tags enable you to identify resources at a glance and categorize billing reports based on cost allocation. For example, you can tag resources by project or department and roll-up charges by tag to allocate costs to that project or department.

Data Load and Unload
You can use the COPY command to load files with UTF-16 encoding in addition to UTF-8 encoding. Moreover, the UNLOAD command now automatically uses Amazon S3 server-side encryption (SSE) to encrypt all unload data files. Server-side encryption adds another layer of data security with little or no change in performance.

Query Functionality
You can now GRANT and REVOKE user privileges for all tables in a schema. In addition, you can DROP a TABLE, VIEW, SCHEMA, or USER if it exists and CREATE a TABLE or SCHEMA if it does not exist. We've also launched a number of window and analytic functions, including MEDIAN window Function, CUME_DIST window function, PERCENT_RANK window function, RATIO_TO_REPORT window function, MONTHS_BETWEEN function, NVL2 function, NEXT_DAY function, and TRANSLATE function.

To learn more about Amazon Redshift's recently released features, please visit the Developer Guide and Management Guide history. To receive alerts when new features are announced, please subscribe to our feature announcements thread in the Amazon Redshift forum.