All SOL-C01 Test Inside Snowflake Questions

In Snowflake’s logical hierarchy, tables reside within schemas, and schemas reside within databases. This structured arrangement allows clear organization, access management, and separation of workloads or business domains. A schema functions as a container that holds tables, views, functions, sequences, stages, and file formats. When users reference a table, they typically qualify it using the full three-part name: database.schema.table.

Stages are used to store or reference files, not to hold structured database tables. Virtual warehouses provide compute power for executing queries and performing DML operations but do not store data. File formats define how staged files should be interpreted (CSV, JSON, Parquet, etc.) and are unrelated to where tables physically reside.

Snowflake separates compute and storage, so while compute happens in virtual warehouses, all persistent data—including tables—is managed in Snowflake’s centralized storage layer, organized through schemas and databases. This organization ensures consistency, ease of management, and predictable access control.

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A Snowflake database is alogical containergrouping one or more schemas. It does not store data physically in the traditional sense—Snowflake abstracts physical storage into its cloud-native micro-partitioned storage layer. Because schemas contain tables, views, and other objects, a database organizes schemas logically, enabling governance, naming conventions, and security boundaries.

A virtual warehouse is compute, not storage. A “collection of tables and views” better describes a schema, not a database. Snowflake separates logical structure from physical storage, so a database is not a physical file repository.

Thus, a database is best defined as a logical grouping of schemas.

TheData Storage Layerin Snowflake stores all data in acompressed, encrypted, columnar formatdesigned for analytical efficiency. Snowflake automatically reorganizes ingested data into micro-partitions optimized for pruning and high-performance scans. The compression and structuring are fully automated, requiring no tuning or indexing by the user.

Another foundational feature iselastic storage, made possible by Snowflake’s cloud-native architecture. Storage automatically scales up or down based on data volume without user intervention, and is separated from compute. This ensures cost efficiency and immediate availability of capacity for large datasets.

Incorrect options:

In-memory storageis not a Snowflake feature; long-term data is persisted in cloud object storage.

Elastic Cloudis not a Snowflake architectural term.

The Data Storage Layer is designed for durability, scalability, and optimal query performance.

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The PARSE_JSON() function ingests a string containing JSON text and converts it into Snowflake’sVARIANTdata type, enabling the JSON to be queried, navigated, and transformed using SQL. Snowflake does not store JSON in its raw textual representation; instead, VARIANT allows Snowflake to apply optimized parsing, indexing, and querying operations against semi-structured content. This function is particularly useful when JSON arrives inline (e.g., supplied directly within SQL statements or loaded from CSV files containing JSON strings). PARSE_JSON does not perform data loading from stages—that is handled through COPY INTO—nor does it convert JSON into XML. Once JSON is converted to VARIANT, Snowflake allows access to nested structures using dot notation, bracket notation, and functions like FLATTEN(). Thus, the function serves as a bridge between raw JSON strings and Snowflake’s relational and analytical capabilities.

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