COF-C03 Question 171
Single answerAccount identifiersA company has separate Snowflake accounts for development, testing, and production. An engineer is configuring a CI/CD pipeline that must connect to the production account from different regions and cloud environments without relying on a region-specific locator string that could change during migrations. Which account identifier should the engineer use in the connection configuration?
- A
The account name by itself, such as PROD
- B
The organization name and account name, such as MYORG-PROD
- C
The account locator by itself, because it is globally unique across all Snowflake deployments
- D
The full warehouse name, because warehouses uniquely identify the target account for client connections
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
For account identification, Snowflake supports multiple identifier formats, including account locator-based formats and the organization name plus account name format. In practical connection scenarios, especially where portability and clarity matter, the organization-account identifier is preferred because account names are unique within an organization and the combined format provides a stable, human-readable identifier. This helps avoid hard-coding region-specific locator details in scripts and pipelines. By contrast, the account locator is commonly used in legacy or region-specific URLs, and the account name alone is not globally sufficient. Warehouses are unrelated to account-level endpoint identification. This aligns with Snowflake documentation and best practices around account identifiers, account URLs, and organization/account naming.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. The account name alone is not sufficient for a globally clear connection target. Account names are unique only within an organization, so using just PROD can be ambiguous and is not the recommended identifier for cross-region or cross-cloud connection configuration.
- B. Correct.
Correct. The organization name combined with the account name forms the organization-account identifier, such as MYORG-PROD. This is the recommended modern account identifier format for many connection and URL patterns because it is more portable and avoids dependence on region-specific account locator details.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. The account locator is an older identifier format commonly seen in account URLs, but by itself it is not the best choice for this scenario. It is tied to region/cloud-specific connection patterns and is less suitable when the goal is to avoid locator-based identifiers in automation.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A warehouse is a compute resource inside a Snowflake account, not an account identifier. It cannot be used to direct a client to the correct Snowflake account endpoint.