title: AWS Redshift -- loading into a TIMESTAMP field
body: <p>I'm using an AWS Kinesis Firehose to write a file to S3, which in turn loads into Redshift.  My table has a TIMESTAMP column on it:</p>
  
  <pre><code>create table TABLE_NAME
  (
    ...
    COLUMN_NAME TIMESTAMP,
    ...
  )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The Redshift COPY options in the Firehose give the format for the column:</p>
  
  <pre><code>DELIMITER '\t' GZIP DATEFORMAT AS 'YYYYMMDD' TIMEFORMAT AS 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS' MAXERROR 1000
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The data for COLUMN_NAME isn't always populated.  In that case, I set the data for the TIMESTAMP column to an empty string.  When this happens, I'm seeing Redshift load errors with error code 1206:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Invalid timestamp format or value [YYYYMMDDHH24MISS]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The interesting part is that my load is still succeeding.  The records with an empty string for this TIMESTAMP column still load to my Redshift table just fine, but I keep seeing these errors logged to the <code>stl_load_errors</code> table.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a Redshift COPY option I should be setting to ignore these errors?  Is there a keyword I should set instead of a blank string in the data?</p>