Technical Overview

Question 1

What is an account

Answer 1

Administrative name for a collection of compute, storage, and cloud services.

OR

an object used to manage account level settings or objects

Question 2

What is an Organization

Answer 2

Manage Snowflake Accounts

Monitor Usage Across Accounts

Setup and administer Snowflake features that make use of multiple accounts

Question 3

What are the four Table types?

Answer 3

Permanent - Default type and exists until dropped

Temporary - Used for transitory data like being part of an ETL process

Transient - Similar to permanent tables, but do NOT support Failsafe. Ideal for transitory data that needs to persist beyond a session.

External - Table that contains data that was queried outside of Snowflake. It is read-only and slower to access.

Question 4

What are the Time Travel and FailSafe details for each Table type?

Answer 4

Permanent - Time Travel - 90 days; Suports Fail Safe

Temporary - Time Travel - 1 day; Does not support Fail Safe

Transient - Time Travel - 1 day; Does not support Fail Safe

External: No Time Travel; No Fail Safe

Question 5

What are the types of Views in Snowflake?

Answer 5

Standard - Stores Query definition, not data

Materialized - Stores the results of a query definition, and periodically refreshes it

Secure - Hides query definition from unauthorized users

Question 6

What are User Defined Functions (UDF)?

Answer 6

Schema Level Objects that allow users to write their own functions

Question 7

What languages does SnowFlake support for UDFs?

Answer 7

SQL

JavaScript

Python

Java

Question 8

What are the return types for UDFs?

Answer 8

Scalar - Returns on output row

Tabular (aka table function or UDTF) - Returns a table/multiple rows

Question 9

What is a Stored Procedure?

Answer 9

A collection of SQL statements that contain procedural logic

Question 10

What is an External Function?

Answer 10

A UDF that calls code outside of Snowflake

Question 11

What are the downsides for of External functions

Answer 11

Scalar only

Not sharable

Less Secure

Cost - Snowflake may charge for data moved to other services or regions

Question 12

What is a Sequence?

Answer 12

An object that generates sequential numbers automatically

Question 13

What is a Task?

Answer 13

A object used to schedule the execution of a SQL statement, Store Proc, or Snowflake Script

Question 14

What permissions are needed to execute or schedule a Task?

Answer 14

Global EXECUTE_TASK permission or ownership of the Task

Question 15

What is a Stream?

Answer 15

An object to track DML changes ( inserts, deletes, updates…)