ADA-C01 Question 461
Single answerIdentify use cases for views and secure viewsA healthcare company stores PHI in SNOWFLAKE_DB.CLINICAL.PATIENT_VISITS. Internal analysts use standard views to simplify reporting. The company now needs to share a subset of visit data with an external research partner through Secure Data Sharing. The partner should see only approved columns and rows, and the company does not want the partner to infer details about underlying base tables or view logic beyond the shared result set. Which object should the administrator create to meet these requirements?
- A
A standard view on PATIENT_VISITS, because views automatically hide the underlying table definition from all consumers
- B
A materialized view on PATIENT_VISITS, because materialized views are required for Secure Data Sharing
- C
A secure view on PATIENT_VISITS, because secure views are designed for data sharing scenarios where the provider must limit exposure of underlying implementation details
- D
A temporary view on PATIENT_VISITS, because temporary objects are isolated per session and therefore safer for external consumers
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The best answer is to create a secure view. In Snowflake, both standard views and secure views can be used to present a subset of rows and columns, but secure views are specifically intended for cases where the data provider must prevent consumers from accessing or inferring certain details about the underlying data and implementation. This makes secure views especially appropriate for Secure Data Sharing, data products, and external consumption scenarios involving sensitive data such as PHI. Standard views are useful for internal abstraction and simplification, but they do not provide the same protections around exposed internals. Materialized views address performance, not sharing security requirements, and temporary views are session-based objects that are not appropriate for external sharing. Snowflake documentation and best practices for secure data sharing commonly recommend secure views when exposing governed subsets of sensitive data.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A standard view can restrict columns and rows, but it does not provide the additional protections intended for secure data sharing scenarios. In Snowflake, secure views are specifically designed to limit exposure of underlying table structures and internal implementation details to data consumers. Someone might choose this option because standard views do abstract query logic, but that abstraction is not the same as the stronger protections provided by secure views.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Materialized views are used primarily for performance optimization by precomputing and storing query results. They are not required for Secure Data Sharing, and they do not address the requirement to minimize exposure of underlying object details to the external partner. This option reflects a common misconception that persisted query results are inherently more secure.
- C. Correct.
Correct. A secure view is the appropriate choice when sharing data externally and the provider wants to expose only the approved result set while protecting details about the underlying tables and view definition behavior. Secure views are a recommended mechanism in Snowflake for data sharing use cases where privacy, governance, and limiting metadata exposure are important.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Temporary views are session-scoped objects intended for short-lived internal work. They are not suitable for Secure Data Sharing because they are not designed as sharable governance objects for external consumers. This distractor is plausible because temporary objects sound isolated, but session isolation is unrelated to secure cross-account data sharing requirements.