SnowPro Core Streams and Tasks

Question 1

What is a Snowflake Stream primarily used for?

Accepted Answer

Tracking DML changes (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) on a table for CDC workflows

Answer

Snowflake Streams track DML changes (inserts, updates, deletes) made to a source table, enabling change data capture (CDC) workflows downstream.

Question 2

Which metadata columns are automatically included when querying a Snowflake Stream?

Accepted Answer

METADATA$ACTION, METADATA$ISUPDATE, METADATA$ROW_ID

Answer

Snowflake streams expose three metadata columns: METADATA$ACTION (INSERT or DELETE), METADATA$ISUPDATE (TRUE if the record is part of an update), and METADATA$ROW_ID (unique row identifier).

Question 3

What happens to records in a Snowflake Stream after they are successfully consumed in a DML transaction?

Accepted Answer

The stream offset advances and those records are no longer visible in the stream

Answer

When a DML transaction that reads stream data commits successfully, the stream's offset pointer advances and the consumed change records are no longer visible — they have been 'consumed'.

Question 4

When does a Snowflake Stream become stale and unusable?

Accepted Answer

When its offset falls outside the source table's DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS window

Answer

A stream becomes stale when its offset falls outside the source table's Time Travel retention period, because Snowflake can no longer reconstruct the historical data the stream depends on.

Question 5

Which of the following Snowflake object types can have a stream created on it?

Accepted Answer

Tables, external tables, views (with limitations), and directory tables

Answer

Snowflake supports streams on standard tables, external tables, views (append-only), and directory tables for tracking file metadata changes on a stage.

SnowPro Core Practice Test

SnowPro Core Practice Test

SnowPro Core Streams and Tasks