SnowPro Associate: Platform Question 352
Single answer● Snowflake MarketplaceA data engineering team wants to enrich internal sales data with a third-party weather dataset available in Snowflake Marketplace. The team needs to start using the provider's data quickly without building custom ingestion pipelines or scheduling file loads. Which action should the Snowflake account administrator take to make the data available for querying in their account?
- A
Install the listing from Snowflake Marketplace so Snowflake creates a database in the consumer account from the shared dataset
- B
Create an external stage pointing to the provider's cloud storage bucket and copy the weather files into an internal table
- C
Ask the provider to export the weather data as CSV files and upload them into a Snowflake internal stage each day
- D
Create a database replication configuration from the provider's account into the consumer account
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Snowflake Marketplace enables providers to publish data products that consumers can access directly within Snowflake. For a consumer, the typical process is to locate the listing and install it, which creates a read-only database in the consumer account from the provider's shared data. This is a practical advantage of Snowflake's secure data sharing model: no ETL pipelines, file transfers, or repeated data loads are required to begin querying the dataset. At the SnowPro Associate level, candidates should recognize that Marketplace consumption is based on secure sharing semantics rather than external stages, manual exports, or replication workflows. Refer to Snowflake documentation on Snowflake Marketplace and Secure Data Sharing for the consumer installation model and how shared databases are created in the recipient account.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Snowflake Marketplace listings are consumed by installing or getting the listing, which creates a database in the consumer account based on the provider's secure share. This allows the team to query the shared data directly in Snowflake without building ingestion pipelines or loading files manually.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. This describes a traditional ingestion approach using external stages and COPY operations. Snowflake Marketplace is designed to avoid this kind of custom pipeline for shared datasets. Consumers typically do not access the provider's raw cloud storage directly through Marketplace.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Exporting CSV files and uploading them daily adds unnecessary operational overhead and defeats one of the main benefits of Snowflake Marketplace: direct access to live shared data without manual file exchange or recurring loads.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Database replication is used for replicating databases across accounts or regions under supported scenarios, not for standard consumption of Marketplace data products. Marketplace datasets are generally delivered through secure data sharing and installed as a database in the consumer account.