Practice Exam 1 Flashcards
Failsafe is provided as an alternate means for any Snowflake user to access historical data once the Time Travel retention period has ended.
True
After the Time Travel period has been completed, the fail-safe storage feature stores data for an additional period of seven days. The fail-safe storage offers additional security against data loss; however, only the Snowflake support team can restore data from the fail-safe storage. Fail-safe is not used by end users to access historical data but to recover from accidental data loss by Snowflake support.
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-failsa
True/False: If you create more than one virtual warehouse, they will share the memory and CPU resources.
False
Snowflake stores data in a shared manner, like in shared-disk architecture. But it also allows for using several compute engines, each with its own memory and processing capabilities. The virtual warehouses are independent of each other but access and process the same shared data. https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/intro-key-concepts#snowflake-architecture
Which of the following views can be used to view the last 365 days of data loading history for data loaded through Snowpipe?
Select two answers.
a. ACCOUNT_USAGE.COPY_HISTORY
b. ACCOUNT_USAGE.LOAD_HISTORY
c. ACCOUNT_USAGE.PIPE_USAGE_HISTORY
d. INFORMATION_SCHEMA.QUERY_HISTORY
a. ACCOUNT_USAGE.COPY_HISTORY
c. ACCOUNT_USAGE.PIPE_USAGE_HISTORY
Explanation
The COPY_HISTORY view and the PIPE_USAGE_HISTORY view in the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema provide the history of data loading performed through Snowpipe.
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/account-usage/pipe_usage_history
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/account-usage/copy_history
Domain
Which role must be granted to a Snowflake user to allow them to create new Snowflake accounts?
a. SECURITYADMIN
b. GLOBALADMIN
c. ORGADMIN
d. ACCOUNTADMIN
e. SYSADMIN
c. ORGADMIN
The ORGADMIN role performs organization-specific tasks like listing all accounts and creating new ones.
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/organizations-gs#enabling-the-orgadmin-role-in-an-account
Snowflake can load data staged in which of the following?
a. Oracle Cloud Storage
b. Internal Stage
c. Azure Blob Storage
d. VMWare Storage
e. AWS S3
f. Google Cloud Storage
b. Internal Stage
c. Azure Blob Storage
e. AWS S3
f. Google Cloud Storage
Snowflake supports loading from Internal Stages and External Stages. External Stages can use AWS S3, Azure Blob, and Google Cloud Storage. Before data can be processed into a Snowflake table, it is typically first made available in a Snowflake stage. This allows Snowflake access to the data to be loaded into a table. Once the data is available in a stage, the COPY command can be used to copy the data into a table.
Which object types can be recovered using the UNDROP command after they have been dropped? Select all that apply.
a. Table
b. Role
c. Database
d. Schema
e. User
a. Table
c. Database
d. Schema
The UNDROP functionality applies to tables, schemas, and databases. That means you can restore complete databases or schemas and their child objects. https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-time-travel#restoring-objects
Snowpark supports which of the following languages?
a. Scala
b. Java
c. Python
a. Scala
b. Java
c. Python
Java, Scala & Python are all supported by Snowpark.
Which of the following Scaling Policy aims to preserve costs?
a. Efficient
b. Economy
c. Fast
d. Standard
b. Economy
The Economy scaling policy attempts to conserve credits over performance and user experience. It doesn’t spin up more virtual warehouses as soon as queuing is observed but instead applies additional criteria to ascertain whether or not to spin up new virtual warehouses. With the scaling policy set to Standard, Snowflake prefers to spin up extra virtual warehouses almost as soon as it detects that queries are starting to queue up. The Standard scaling policy aims to prevent or minimize queuing.
The usage data provided through the INFORMATION SCHEMA has a retention of how many days?
a. 128 days
b. Correct answer
c. 7 days - 6 months
d. 365 days
e. Forever
c. 7 days - 6 months
The data in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views is retained for a shorter period. Typical data retention in INFORMATION SCHEMA is 14 days but can be seven days for specific views and up to 6 months for usage history views. Thus, these views have retention ranging from 7 days to a maximum of 6 months, depending on the view. So typically, the views in the INFORMATION SCHEMA can be used to find more recent information.
Which of the following Snowflake Editions support Time Travel? Select all that apply
a.Standard
b.Business Critical
c.Enterprise
d.Virtual Private Snowflake
a.Standard
b.Business Critical
c.Enterprise
d.Virtual Private Snowflake
Time Travel is supported in all Snowflake editions. https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-time-travel#data-retention-period
True or False: When defining a clustering key for a large table, consider using columns frequently used in WHERE clauses.
True
Overall explanation
When defining clustering keys, the initial candidate clustering columns are those columns that are frequently used in the WHERE clause or other selective filters. Additionally, columns that are used for joining can also be considered. Furthermore, the columns’ cardinality (number of distinct values) is also important. It is crucial to choose a column with a high enough cardinality to allow effective partition pruning while having a low enough cardinality for Snowflake to group data into micro-partitions efficiently. A column with too few distinct values (e.g., gender) will result in minimal partition pruning. On the other hand, a column that has too many distinct values (e.g., customer id) will result in too much overhead when maintaining the partitions. When creating a multi-column cluster key, order the columns from the lowest cardinality to the higher cardinality; otherwise, the effectiveness of clustering will be reduced.
Which file function allows any user or application access to download unstructured data in a Snowflake stage?
a. GET_DATA_FROM_STAGE
b. BUILD_STAGE_FILE_URL
c. BUILD_SCOPED_FILE_URL
d. GET_PRESIGNED_URL
A pre-signed URL is a simple HTTPS URL for accessing a file using a web browser. A pre-signed URL is generated using a pre-signed access token. Users can temporarily access a file via a pre-signed URL without authorization. The expiry duration of a pre-signed URL is configurable and can be set to the required duration.
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/unstructured-intro#types-of-urls-available-to-access-files
What type of virtual warehouse automatically lets you add or remove additional clusters as concurrency and demand change?
a. Multi-cluster virtual warehouse
b. Non-virtual warehouse
c. X-Large virtual warehouse
d. Suspended virtual warehouse
a. Multi-cluster virtual warehouse
Multi-cluster virtual warehouses are utilized when the number of concurrent users exceeds a single virtual warehouse’s capacity. When the concurrent workload for a virtual warehouse reaches the maximum, new queries are queued. Multi-cluster virtual warehouses address this by adding clusters as needed. When the demand drops, the extra clusters are removed. https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/warehouses-considerations#how-are-credits-charged-for-warehouses
What of the following Snowflake edition allows data clustering to improve query performance?
a. Business Critical
b. Virtual Private Snowflake
c. Enterprise
d. Standard
a. Business Critical
b. Virtual Private Snowflake
c. Enterprise
d. Standard
Which of the following is true for the DATABASE_STORAGE_USAGE_HISTORY view in the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema?
a. This view does not show information for deleted databases.
b. This view contains information for the last 365 days.
c. This view shows the number of bytes of fail-safe storage used.
d. This view shows information for all databases, including deleted databases.
e. This view contains real-time information.
f. This view shows the number of bytes of database storage used, including Time Travel storage.
a, b, c, e
The DATABASE_STORAGE_USAGE_HISTORY view in the ACCOUNT_USAGE schema shows the number of bytes of database storage used by each database, including information for data that is in Time Travel. The view also separately shows the number of bytes in fail-safe storage. Like other ACCOUNT_USAGE views, the data for the last 365 days is shown; this view can have a latency of up to 3 hours (not real-time) and includes deleted objects.
