Usually I use Postico for all of my Redshift data exploration and SQL query development needs. For newer databases like Snowflake though, I’ve been playing with DBeaver and DataGrip.

DBeaver specifically with Snowflake wasn’t playing nicely with timezone comparisons right out the box. It kept wanting to convert everything to my local timezone (PST). This made it difficult to do time ranged comparisons because I’m used to working off UTC.

There’s no direct option within DBeaver to control this behavior, but thankfully there is an .ini hack that can trick DBeaver into thinking you are in UTC.

Mac

1. Go to Finder > Applications
2. Right click on DBeaver and select Show Package Contents
3. Open Contents\Eclipse\dbeaver.ini
4. After the -vmargs line, add this: -Duser.timezone=UTC
5. Save file and restart DBeaver

Limitation: You’ll have to redo this for every version upgrade.

Windows

1. Go to DBeaver install directory C:\Program Files\DBeaver
2. Open dbeaver.ini
3. After the -vmargs line, add this: -Duser.timezone=UTC
4. Save file and restart DBeaver

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