`currenttimestamp`
Generic Description
Is the compact alias for current timestamp. It is documented separately because time construction, sequence ordering, window parameters, and as-of behavior materially change analytical meaning.
Simple example:
RETURN currenttimestamp() AS value
Consumer-Level Explanation
Use it only when this spelling matches an imported query style. Prefer this function when the temporal assumption should be visible to the planner, especially for event streams, freshness checks, and sequence features.
More Detailed Explanation
currenttimestamp belongs to the temporal construction, conversion, or extraction surface. Use it to make time semantics explicit in the query text: whether a value is date-only, time-only, timestamp-like, duration-like, current-time dependent, or bucketed to a chosen calendar unit.
Advanced Example
This example names the event stream and operational context before applying currenttimestamp, which helps planner tooling preserve the intended sequence semantics.
WITH 'sensor-1' AS subject_id,
[{ts: 1735689600000, value: 10.0, state: 'ok'}, {ts: 1735689660000, value: 13.0, state: 'ok'}, {ts: 1735689840000, value: 9.0, state: 'warn'}, {ts: 1735690200000, value: 16.0, state: 'ok'}] AS readings
RETURN subject_id,
currenttimestamp() AS value
Real Use Cases
- time-bucketed graph analytics
- as-of filtering and event-window construction
- making imported timestamp strings or epoch values typed before comparison
Real Limitations And Tradeoffs
- current-time functions are intentionally nondeterministic
- timezone and local-time choices should be made explicit when results cross systems
- extractors and truncation functions do not create temporal history; they only transform values already in the row