ADA-C01 Question 440
Single answerShare data among different Snowflake editionsA software company uses a Snowflake Enterprise Edition account to centralize curated sales data for dozens of customers. One customer has a Snowflake Standard Edition account and wants near real-time access to a subset of tables without copying data. The data provider also wants to minimize administration and avoid creating duplicate storage. Which approach should the Snowflake administrator recommend?
- A
Create a secure data share in the Enterprise Edition account and add the customer’s Standard Edition account as a consumer.
- B
Replicate the database from the Enterprise Edition account into the customer’s Standard Edition account, then grant access to the replicated objects.
- C
Unload the tables to cloud storage on a schedule and have the customer create external tables over the files.
- D
Upgrade the customer to Enterprise Edition first, because direct sharing is only supported between accounts on the same Snowflake edition.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best answer is to use Secure Data Sharing. In Snowflake, shares provide live access to data without physically copying it into the consumer account, which aligns directly with the requirement to avoid duplicate storage and minimize administration. This is especially useful for provider-consumer scenarios such as a software company distributing curated datasets to customers. A key exam point is that sharing is supported across different Snowflake editions; the provider and consumer do not need to be on the same edition for standard secure sharing scenarios. By contrast, replication creates additional copies and is intended for failover, disaster recovery, and similar use cases rather than simple consumer access. Unloading to cloud storage increases complexity and data movement. Snowflake documentation on Secure Data Sharing and data providers/consumers emphasizes that shares enable read-only access to live data and are the preferred approach when the goal is distribution without copying.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Secure data sharing is designed for this use case: providing live, read-only access to selected database objects without copying or unloading the data. Snowflake data sharing can occur across different Snowflake editions, so an Enterprise Edition provider can share data with a Standard Edition consumer. The consumer creates a database from the share and queries the shared objects, while storage remains only in the provider account.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Database replication is not the best fit for this requirement. Replication creates a copy of data/metadata in another account or region and is used for business continuity, disaster recovery, and data locality scenarios, not as the primary mechanism for straightforward live data sharing to customers. It also introduces additional administration and duplicate storage, which the scenario explicitly wants to avoid.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Unloading to cloud storage and exposing files through external tables is a workaround that adds operational overhead, delays freshness, and typically duplicates data in storage. It does not provide the simplicity or near real-time, no-copy access that Snowflake secure sharing offers.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. This reflects a common misconception. Snowflake secure data sharing is not limited to accounts on the same edition. A provider on a higher edition can share data with a consumer on a different supported edition. Requiring the customer to upgrade editions is unnecessary for this scenario.