Helping Hand Questions for COF-C02

Thefile formatoption in Snowflake can be specified in the following commands:

CREATE STAGE: This command allows users to define the file format when creating a stage, which applies to any data loaded or unloaded via that stage.

COPY INTO : This command enables data export from a table to an external location, where the file format can be specified to ensure the data is structured as needed for downstream systems.

Other commands, such as PUT or GET, do not support the specification of file formats directly within the command syntax.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Why B (Time Travel will be deactivated for the object) is correct:In Snowflake, the data retention period determines how long historical data (including deleted or modified data) is retained for Time Travel. When this period is set to 0 days, Time Travel is effectively disabled for that object (such as a table, schema, or database).

From the official Snowflake documentation:

“The DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS parameter specifies the number of days for which historical data is retained for Time Travel. A value of 0 disables Time Travel for the object.”

This means:

When DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS = 0, no historical versions of the object’s data are retained.

As a result, Time Travel queries (using AT or BEFORE clauses) and undrop/recovery operations are not available for that object.

Why A (Streams containing the object will become stale) is incorrect:Streams become stale when the data change tracking window exceeds the retention period of the source table’s Time Travel, but only if the retention period expires after some time. Setting retention to 0 disables Time Travel immediately, but doesn’t by itself make existing streams “stale.” Instead, new streams cannot be used effectively because there is no historical data to track.

Why C (Data replication will be disabled) is incorrect:Data replication is independent of the Time Travel retention period. A retention period of 0 does not affect replication; it only impacts the Time Travel feature.

Why D (Data sharing will be disabled) is incorrect:Data sharing is a separate Snowflake feature (using Secure Data Sharing). It is not impacted by Time Travel retention settings. Shared data can still be accessible regardless of the retention period.

References (Snowflake SnowPro Core / Study Guide / Official Documentation):

Snowflake Documentation — Time Travel:

“Setting DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS = 0 disables Time Travel for the object.”

Snowflake Documentation — Object Parameters:Describes DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS behavior at the database, schema, and table levels.

Snowflake Study Guide — Data Protection and Governance:Clarifies that setting retention to zero disables historical data storage and deactivates Time Travel functionality.

Parquet is a columnar storage file format that is optimized for efficiency in both storage and processing. It supports compression and encoding schemes that significantly reduce the storage space needed and speed up data retrieval operations, making it ideal for handling large volumes of data. Unlike JSON or TSV, which are row-oriented and typically uncompressed, Parquet is designed specifically for use with big data frameworks, offering advantages in terms of performance and cost when storing and querying semi-structured data.