ADA-C01 Question 386
Single answerDifferentiate use cases for the ACCOUNT_USAGE and ORGANIZATION_USAGE viewsA global Snowflake administrator needs to build a monthly governance report for executives. The report must show total warehouse credit consumption and storage usage across every account in the company’s Snowflake organization, while also allowing each individual account admin to continue creating detailed reports about objects and user activity within only their own account. Which approach best meets these requirements?
- A
Use SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE views in one account to report on all accounts in the organization, and let individual account admins use ORGANIZATION_USAGE for account-level detail.
- B
Use SNOWFLAKE.ORGANIZATION_USAGE views for the cross-account executive report, and let each account admin use SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE views for detailed reporting within their own account.
- C
Use INFORMATION_SCHEMA in the organization account for both the cross-account report and all account-level historical reporting, because it has no latency and includes all organization history.
- D
Replicate ACCOUNT_USAGE data from each account into a central database, because ORGANIZATION_USAGE does not provide usage information across accounts.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The key distinction is scope and intended audience. SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE provides historical usage and metadata views for a single account, which is ideal for account administrators investigating their own users, objects, warehouses, query history, or billing-related details within that account. SNOWFLAKE.ORGANIZATION_USAGE is intended for organization-wide reporting across accounts and is the correct source when executives or central governance teams need aggregated visibility for the entire Snowflake organization. In practice, use ORGANIZATION_USAGE for centralized cross-account governance and chargeback/showback reporting, and use ACCOUNT_USAGE for deeper account-specific administration and operational analysis. This aligns with Snowflake documentation describing ACCOUNT_USAGE as account-scoped shared views and ORGANIZATION_USAGE as organization-scoped views for multi-account visibility.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. ACCOUNT_USAGE is scoped to a single account, not the entire organization. It is useful for detailed historical metadata and usage analysis within that account, but it cannot directly provide organization-wide reporting across all accounts. The second part is also reversed: ORGANIZATION_USAGE is intended for organization-level visibility, not per-account detailed administration by local account admins.
- B. Correct.
Correct. ORGANIZATION_USAGE is designed for organization-level reporting across multiple accounts, making it appropriate for executive reporting on aggregate usage such as credits and storage across the company’s Snowflake organization. ACCOUNT_USAGE is the correct choice for each account admin who needs detailed historical views and object/activity reporting within their own account. This division matches Snowflake’s intended use cases for these shared views.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. INFORMATION_SCHEMA is primarily for current metadata and account-scoped introspection, not centralized organization-wide historical usage reporting. It is not a substitute for ORGANIZATION_USAGE when the requirement is cross-account governance reporting. The claim that it includes all organization history is inaccurate.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. While some organizations do centralize data from multiple accounts for custom analytics, the statement that ORGANIZATION_USAGE does not provide cross-account usage information is false. ORGANIZATION_USAGE exists specifically to support organization-level visibility across accounts. Replication might be used for other reasons, but it is not the best answer to this requirement.