Snowflake Interview Questions and Answers
Experienced / Expert level questions & answers
Ques 1. Explain the Snowflake architecture.
Snowflake follows a multi-cluster, shared data architecture. It consists of storage, virtual warehouses for compute, and metadata services. The separation of storage and compute enables scalability and performance.
Ques 2. What is Time Travel in Snowflake?
Time Travel in Snowflake allows users to access historical versions of data. It includes two features: Time Travel (for short-term history) and Fail-Safe (for long-term history).
Ques 3. Explain Snowflake's automatic clustering feature.
Snowflake's automatic clustering optimizes storage and query performance by organizing data based on usage patterns. It reduces the need for manual clustering and enhances query efficiency.
Ques 4. What is Snowflake's approach to handling data sharing between different accounts?
Snowflake enables secure data sharing across different accounts through the use of shareable objects, such as databases, schemas, and tables. It allows controlled access to data without physical duplication.
Ques 5. How can you optimize Snowflake queries for performance?
Query performance in Snowflake can be optimized by designing efficient data models, utilizing appropriate clustering keys, and using materialized views. Understanding and optimizing query execution plans also contribute to performance improvements.
Ques 6. How does Snowflake ensure high availability and fault tolerance?
Snowflake achieves high availability through automatic failover and load balancing. Data is stored redundantly across multiple nodes and regions, ensuring fault tolerance and minimizing the impact of hardware failures.
Ques 7. Explain the concept of Snowflake's Zero-Copy Cloning.
Zero-Copy Cloning in Snowflake allows for creating a copy of a database or table without duplicating the data. It shares the underlying data storage, minimizing storage costs and providing efficient data cloning.
Ques 8. How does Snowflake support data sharing with external entities?
Snowflake supports data sharing through secure views and shares. This allows organizations to share specific subsets of data with external entities, maintaining control over access and permissions.
Ques 9. How can Snowflake assist in handling data privacy and compliance requirements?
Snowflake provides features like column-level security, auditing, and encryption to assist in meeting data privacy and compliance requirements. It helps organizations adhere to regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA.
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