ARA-R01 Exam Dumps : SnowPro Advanced: Architect Recertification Exam

 A reader account is a type of Snowflake account that allows external users to access data shared by a provider account without being a Snowflake customer. A reader account can be created and managed by the provider account, and can use the Snowflake web interface or JDBC/ODBC drivers to query the shared data. A reader account is billed to the provider account based on the credits consumed by the queries1. A secure view is a type of view that applies row-level security filters to the underlying tables, and masks the data that is not accessible to the user. A secure view can be shared with a reader account to provide granular and governed access to the data2. In this scenario, creating a reader account for the partner and sharing the data sets as secure views would be the most cost-effective and secure design, while using the required Snowflake features, because:

• It would avoid the data transfer and storage costs of using an S3 bucket as a destination, and the potential security risks of exposing the data to unauthorized access or modification.
• It would avoid the complexity and overhead of publishing the data sets on the Snowflake Marketplace, and the potential loss of control over the data ownership and pricing.
• It would avoid the need to create a database user for the partner and grant them access to the required data sets, which would require the partner to have a Snowflake account and consume the provider’s resources.

References:

• Reader Accounts
• Secure Views

An external table schema defines the columns and data types of the data stored in an external stage. All external tables include the following columns by default:

• VALUE: A VARIANT type column that represents a single row in the external file.
• METADATA$FILENAME: A pseudocolumn that identifies the name of each staged data file included in the external table, including its path in the stage.
• METADATA$FILE_ROW_NUMBER: A pseudocolumn that shows the row number for each record in a staged data file.

You can also create additional virtual columns as expressions using the VALUE column and/or the pseudocolumns. However, the following columns are not valid for external tables and cannot be included in the schema:

• METADATASROW_ID: This column is only available for internal tables and shows the unique identifier for each row in the table.
• METADATASISUPDATE: This column is only available for internal tables and shows whether the row was inserted or updated by a merge operation.
• METADATASEXTERNAL TABLE PARTITION: This column is not a valid column name and does not exist in Snowflake.

References: Introduction to External Tables, CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE

For the configuration of data unloading in Snowflake, the valid option among the provided choices is "C." This is because Snowflake supports unloading data into Google Cloud Storage using the COPY INTO command with specific configurations. The configurations listed in option C, such as Parquet file format with UTF-8 encoding and gzip compression, are all supported by Snowflake. Notably, Parquet is a columnar storage file format, which is optimal for high-performance data processing tasks in Snowflake. The UTF-8 file encoding and gzip compression are both standard and widely used settings that are compatible with Snowflake’s capabilities for data unloading to cloud storage platforms.References:

• Snowflake Documentation on COPY INTO command
• Snowflake Documentation on Supported File Formats
• Snowflake Documentation on Compression and Encoding Options