Pass the Snowflake SnowPro Core Certification SnowPro-Core Questions and answers with CertsForce

The Cloud Services layer in Snowflake is responsible for various services, including security (like authentication and authorization) and metadata management (like query parsing and optimization). References: Based on general cloud architecture knowledge as of 2021.

Credit charges for Snowflake virtual warehouses are calculated based on the size of the virtual warehouse and the length of time the warehouse is running. The size determines the compute resources available, and charges are incurred for the time these resources are utilized

The COPY INTO <title> command in Snowflake supports transformations such as casting using a SELECT statement. This allows for the transformation of data types as the data is being loaded into the table, which can be particularly useful when the data types in the source files do not match the data types in the target table

To allow secure views the ability to reference data in multiple databases, the REFERENCE_USAGE privilege must be granted on each database that contains objects referenced by the secure view2. This privilege is necessary before granting the SELECT privilege on a secure view to a share.

 Snowpipe is used for continuous, automated data loading into Snowflake. It uses a COPY INTO <title> statement within a pipe object to load data from files as soon as they are available in a stage. Snowpipe does not execute UDFs, stored procedures, or insert statements. References: Snowpipe | Snowflake Documentation

 In Snowflake, when the account is located on Microsoft Azure, a valid source for an external stage can be an Azure container or a folder path within an Azure container. This includes Azure Blob storage which is accessible via the azure:// endpoint. A Windows server file share on Azure, if configured properly, can be a valid source for staging data files for Snowflake. Options A, B, and C are not supported as direct sources for an external stage in Snowflake on Azure12. References: [COF-C02] SnowPro Core Certification Exam Study Guide

 The Snowflake Cloud Services layer manages a variety of services that are crucial for the operation of the Snowflake platform. Among these services, Authentication and Metadata management are key components. Authentication is essential for controlling access to the Snowflake environment, ensuring that only authorized users can perform actions within the platform. Metadata management involves handling all the metadata related to objects within Snowflake, such as tables, views, and databases, which is vital for the organization and retrieval of data.

References:

[COF-C02] SnowPro Core Certification Exam Study Guide

Snowflake Documentation12

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/intro-key-concepts.html

Data Robot is recognized as a machine learning and data science partner within the Snowflake Partner Ecosystem. It provides an enterprise AI platform that enables users to build and deploy accurate predictive models quickly. As a partner, Data Robot integrates with Snowflake to enhance data science capabilities2.

References:

[COF-C02] SnowPro Core Certification Exam Study Guide

Snowflake Documentation on Machine Learning & Data Science Partners

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/ecosystem-analytics.html

Secure sharing in Snowflake allows users to share specific objects with other Snowflake accounts without physically copying the data, thus not consuming additional storage. Tables and Secure User Defined Functions (UDFs) are among the objects that can be shared using this feature. Materialized views, sequences, and procedures are not shareable objects in Snowflake.

References:

[COF-C02] SnowPro Core Certification Exam Study Guide

Snowflake Documentation on Secure Data Sharing1

Snowflake automatically rotates encryption keys when they are more than 30 days old. Active keys are retired, and new keys are created. This process is part of Snowflake’s comprehensive security measures to ensure data protection and is managed entirely by the Snowflake service without requiring user intervention.

References:

Understanding Encryption Key Management in Snowflake

Column-level security is a feature that allows fine-grained control over access to specific columns within a table. This is particularly useful for managing sensitive data and ensuring that only authorized users can view or manipulate certain pieces of information. According to my last update, this feature was available in the Enterprise Edition or higher editions of Snowflake.

References: Based on my internal data as of 2021, column-level security is an advanced feature typically reserved for higher-tiered editions like the Enterprise Edition in data warehousing solutions such as Snowflake.

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/intro-editions.html

Snowflake does not require source data files to be no larger than 16MB. In fact, Snowflake recommends that for optimal load performance, data files should be roughly 100-250 MB in size when compressed. However, it is not recommended to load very large files (e.g., 100 GB or larger) due to potential delays and wasted credits if errors occur. Smaller files should be aggregated to minimize processing overhead, and larger files should be split to distribute the load among compute resources in an active warehouse.

References: Preparing your data files | Snowflake Documentation

In Snowflake, a Pipe is the object designed to enable the continuous, near-real-time loading of data from files as soon as they are available in a cloud storage location. Pipes use Snowflake’s COPY command to load data and can be associated with a Stage object to monitor for new files. When new data files appear in the stage, the pipe automatically loads the data into the target table.

References:

Snowflake Documentation on Pipes

SnowPro® Core Certification Study Guide

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-load-snowpipe-intro.html

The most efficient way to get files into Snowflake, especially when new files are being written to a cloud storage location at frequent intervals, is to use Snowpipe with auto-ingest. Snowpipe is Snowflake’s continuous data ingestion service that loads data as soon as it becomes available in a cloud storage location. By setting up cloud provider notifications, Snowpipe can be triggered automatically whenever new files are written to the storage location, ensuring that the data is loaded into Snowflake with minimal latency and without the need for manual intervention or scheduling frequent tasks.

References:

Snowflake Documentation on Snowpipe

SnowPro® Core Certification Study Guide

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/intro-summary-loading.html#:~:text=For%20delimited%20files%20(CSV%2C%20TSV,encoding%20to%20use%20for%20loading .

For delimited files (CSV, TSV, etc.), the default character set is UTF-8. To use any other characters sets, you must explicitly specify the encoding to use for loading. For the list of supported character sets, see Supported Character Sets for Delimited Files (in this topic).