SnowPro Associate: Platform Question 336
Single answer4.1 Outline continuous data protection with Snowflake.A data engineering team accidentally ran a DELETE statement without a WHERE clause on a large production table in Snowflake at 10:05 AM. The team discovers the mistake at 10:20 AM and needs to recover the data quickly with minimal administrative effort. The table has not been dropped, and no fail-safe request is involved. Which Snowflake feature should they use first to restore the table data to its state before the DELETE?
- A
Use Time Travel to query or restore the table to a point before 10:05 AM
- B
Use Fail-safe to immediately recover the deleted rows from Snowflake support
- C
Restore the data by resizing the virtual warehouse to replay the transaction history
- D
Use data sharing to retrieve the previous version of the table from another account
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best answer is Time Travel. Snowflake continuous data protection includes Time Travel and Fail-safe. Time Travel supports self-service access to historical data for objects such as tables, schemas, and databases within a defined retention period, making it the correct first response to accidental DML changes like DELETE, UPDATE, or DROP. Fail-safe exists as an additional recovery layer after Time Travel expires, but it is not designed for routine operational recovery and is managed by Snowflake. For SnowPro Associate-level knowledge, candidates should recognize that accidental recent data changes are typically recovered using Time Travel, while Fail-safe is a later-stage safety net rather than the primary operational tool.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Time Travel is Snowflake's primary continuous data protection feature for recovering data changed, deleted, or replaced within the configured retention period. Since the table still exists and the issue was discovered shortly after the accidental DELETE, the team can use Time Travel to access the table as it existed before 10:05 AM, for example by querying historical data with AT or BEFORE, or by restoring with a CREATE TABLE ... CLONE statement from an earlier point in time.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Fail-safe is not intended for immediate self-service recovery of recently changed data. It is a Snowflake-managed recovery mechanism used after the Time Travel retention period has expired, and recovery typically requires Snowflake support. It is also not the first option when the data is still within the Time Travel window.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Virtual warehouse size affects compute resources for query execution, not logical data recovery. Resizing a warehouse does not replay transactions or restore deleted data. This distractor reflects a common misunderstanding between compute configuration and storage-level data protection features.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Secure data sharing allows live access to shared data objects, but it is not a backup or recovery mechanism for restoring a prior version of a table in the same account. Unless another account independently retained and exposed the needed data version, data sharing does not provide point-in-time recovery.