SnowPro Associate: Platform Question 339
Single answer4.1 Outline continuous data protection with Snowflake.A data engineering team accidentally runs a DELETE statement in Snowflake that removes several days of records from a production table at 10:00 AM. The mistake is discovered at 10:20 AM. The team needs to restore the missing data as quickly as possible without relying on external backups. Which Snowflake capability should they use?
- A
Use Time Travel to query or restore the table to a point before 10:00 AM
- B
Use Fail-safe to immediately recover the deleted rows back into the production table
- C
Use data replication to automatically roll back the table to its prior state
- D
Use result caching to retrieve the deleted rows and reinsert them into the table
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Snowflake continuous data protection is primarily provided through Time Travel and Fail-safe. Time Travel allows users to access historical data for objects such as tables, schemas, and databases within the configured retention period, making it the correct solution for recovering from recent accidental DML operations like DELETE, UPDATE, or DROP. Fail-safe exists as an additional recovery layer after Time Travel expires, but it is not intended for immediate operational restores and requires Snowflake intervention. Replication supports business continuity/disaster recovery architectures, but it does not replace Time Travel for correcting recent user errors. Result cache improves performance only and should not be confused with recoverable historical storage. This aligns with Snowflake documentation on Time Travel, Fail-safe, and data protection best practices.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Time Travel is Snowflake's primary continuous data protection feature for recovering data that was changed or deleted within the configured retention period. Because the issue was identified only 20 minutes after the DELETE, the team can use Time Travel to query the table as it existed before 10:00 AM, or create/restore data from that earlier state. This is the fastest built-in recovery option for recent accidental changes.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Fail-safe is not designed for immediate self-service recovery by users. It is a last-resort recovery mechanism managed by Snowflake after the Time Travel retention period has expired. It is intended for disaster recovery situations, not for quickly undoing a recent accidental DELETE discovered within minutes.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Replication is used for account/database-level business continuity and disaster recovery use cases across regions or clouds, but it does not function as an automatic point-in-time rollback tool for a recent DML mistake in a table. For this scenario, Time Travel is the appropriate feature.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Result caching stores query results temporarily to improve performance for repeated queries, but it is not a data recovery mechanism. Cached results cannot be relied upon to reconstruct deleted table data for restoration.