What does the :: operator do when used with a VARIANT value?

The correct answer is C. Casts the value from a VARIANT to a specified data type .

In Snowflake, the :: operator is the cast operator. It converts a value from one data type to another. When working with semi-structured data, it is commonly used to cast values extracted from a VARIANT column into standard SQL data types such as STRING, NUMBER, BOOLEAN, or TIMESTAMP.

Why C is correct:

A VARIANT value often needs to be explicitly cast before it is used in comparisons, calculations, or formatted output.

Example:

SELECT src:customer_id::NUMBER,

src:name::STRING

FROM my_table;

In this example:

src:customer_id::NUMBER

extracts customer_id from a VARIANT column and casts it to NUMBER.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. :: does not specifically convert every VARIANT into an object. It casts to whichever data type is specified.

B. Extracting a value from a VARIANT uses path notation or functions such as GET and GET_PATH; :: performs casting.

D. :: has nothing to do with random sampling.

Official Snowflake documentation reference:

Snowflake documentation describes :: as the cast operator and shows its use for converting semi-structured VARIANT values to explicit SQL data types.