COF-C03 Question 321
Single answer5.2 Explain Snowflake's data sharing capabilitiesA data provider stores curated sales data in Snowflake and needs to make it available to several external customers. The provider wants customers to query the data without copying it, and the provider must be able to manage access centrally and update the shared data so changes are visible to consumers automatically. Which Snowflake feature best meets these requirements?
- A
Create a secure data share and grant consumer accounts access to the database objects in the share
- B
Replicate the database to each customer account so each consumer has an independent copy
- C
Unload the data to cloud storage and provide each customer with pre-signed URLs
- D
Create reader accounts only, because direct sharing is not supported for external Snowflake accounts
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Snowflake Secure Data Sharing enables providers to share live, read-only database objects with other Snowflake accounts without physically copying the data. This supports centralized access control by the provider and allows consumers to see current data as the provider updates it. Reader accounts are an extension of data sharing for consumers who do not have their own Snowflake account, but they are not required when consumers already have Snowflake accounts. Replication and file-based sharing solve different problems and do not provide the zero-copy, continuously updated access model required here. Snowflake documentation on Secure Data Sharing and Reader Accounts emphasizes that shares expose database objects directly across accounts while maintaining governance from the provider side.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Secure data sharing is designed for exactly this use case: a provider shares selected database objects with other Snowflake accounts without copying the underlying data. Consumers can query the shared objects, while the provider retains centralized control over access. Updates made by the provider to the shared objects are reflected for consumers because the data is not duplicated. This is a core Snowflake capability for live, governed data sharing.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Database replication creates copies of data in other regions or accounts for business continuity and locality use cases, but it is not the best fit when the requirement is to avoid copying data and to expose live updates through centralized governance. Replication introduces separate copies rather than a single shared source.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Unloading to cloud storage creates files outside Snowflake and requires customers to ingest or read those files separately. This approach loses the key advantages of Snowflake sharing, including zero-copy access, centralized object-level governance, and immediate visibility of updates within Snowflake.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Reader accounts are useful when the consumer does not already have a Snowflake account, because they allow the provider to share data with non-Snowflake users. However, the scenario describes external customers in general and asks for the best feature to share with customers without copying data. If customers already have Snowflake accounts, direct secure data sharing is the standard and preferred approach. Saying reader accounts are required because direct sharing is not supported is factually wrong.