Snowflake Study Flashcards
Cloud analytical warehouse separating computing virtual warehouses from storage. Click any card to flip and test your knowledge.
What is the core architecture of Snowflake?
Separation of Storage, Multi-Cluster Compute (Virtual Warehouses), and Cloud Services layer.
What is a Virtual Warehouse?
An independent CPU/RAM compute cluster used to execute SQL queries and DML operations.
What is Micro-partitioning in Snowflake?
Automatic contiguous 50MB-150MB compressed storage blocks formatted in columnar layout.
What is the QUALIFY clause?
QUALIFY filters window function results in a SELECT statement, eliminating subqueries.
What is Zero-Copy Cloning?
Instantly creates a metadata copy of tables or databases without duplicating physical data storage.
What is Time Travel in Snowflake?
Access historic table data state at any point within a configurable period (up to 90 days).
What is Snowpipe?
An automated continuous data ingestion service loading files as they land in S3/GCS stages.
What is VARIANT data type?
A flexible semi-structured data type storing up to 16MB of JSON, Avro, ORC, or XML data.
How does Clustering Key help queries?
Organizes micro-partitions along specified columns to maximize partition pruning speed.
What is Data Sharing in Snowflake?
Enables secure live data sharing across Snowflake accounts without copying physical files.
Need practical SQL queries for Snowflake?
Explore our ready-to-use copy-paste query recipes in the Cookbook.