Snowflake Interview Questions

1. What is Snowflake?

Ans. Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehousing platform with a unique architecture that enhances data handling and analysis. It stands out from traditional data warehouse solutions with features like simplicity, superior performance, high concurrency, and cost-effectiveness.

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2. What is unique about Snowflake Architecture?

Ans. Snowflake's architecture is a hybrid model with shared-nothing and shared-disk designs. It combines a central data repository for consistent data storage accessible from all computing nodes with massively parallel processing for executing queries. Its three-layer structure includes Query Processing, Data Storage, and Cloud Services. Each layer plays a key role in managing and optimizing data handling, from query execution to metadata management.

3. How to access Snowflake's data warehouse?

Ans. Snowflake's data warehouse is accessible through various methods. These include ODBC and JDBC drivers, Python libraries, a web user interface, and the SnowSQL command-line client, catering to diverse user preferences and technical needs.

4. What benefits does a Snowflake database offer?

Ans. Snowflake's cloud-native design addresses challenges unresolved by traditional warehouses. Key benefits are as follows:

• Robust security.
• Consistent high availability.
• Seamless data sharing.
• Impressive speed and performance.
• The capability to handle both structured and unstructured data efficiently.

5. How is the data securely stored in Snowflake?

Ans. Snowflake prioritizes data security, adhering to the highest industry encryption and data protection standards. Key security measures include managed data encryption, TLS for secure communications, and geographic-specific data storage options, ensuring comprehensive data safety.

6. How does Snowflake Data Compression work?

Ans. Snowflake automatically compresses all stored data using advanced algorithms. The unique aspect is that customer charges are based on the compressed data size, leading to lower storage costs and negligible storage overhead for data cloning or sharing.

7. What is Snowflake Catching?

Ans. Snowflake enhances SQL query performance through data and result caching on SSDs. It captures and reuses the outcomes of previous queries, thereby speeding up query responses and optimizing resource use.

8. What is Time Travel?

Ans. Snowflake's Time Travel feature allows users to access and interact with historical data, enabling data restoration, historical analysis, and backup of critical data points, enhancing data management and recovery capabilities.

9. What is Fail-safe?

Ans. Fail-safe in Snowflake is an advanced feature that adds more data protection. It provides an additional seven-day storage period after the time travel period, ensuring enhanced data security.

10. Explain Snowflake features.

Ans. Snowflake's features encompass a range of functionalities, including Cloud Services, a Compute Layer, Database Storage, easy data sharing, robust security, high-speed performance, and support for structured and unstructured data, showing its versatility and efficiency.

Intermediate level Snowflake interview questions:

11. What are the different editions of Snowflake?

Ans. Snowflake offers editions tailored to varying client needs, including the Standard Edition for beginners, the Enterprise Edition for large-scale operations, the Business-Critical Edition for sensitive data, and the Virtual Private Snowflake for high-security demands.

12. What is the virtual warehouse?

Ans. Snowflake's virtual warehouse is a set of clusters facilitating data operations like loading and queries. It provides essential resources such as CPU and temporary storage for efficient data processing.

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13. Why do we use Fail-safe?

Ans. Fail-safe in Snowflake addresses the drawbacks of traditional data backup methods, offering a more efficient, cost-effective, and time-saving solution for data recovery and management, minimizing company downtime.

14. What are the data shares in Snowflake?

Ans. Snowflake enables safe data sharing across accounts, allowing users to share readable but non-modifiable database objects. This feature facilitates data collaboration and access across different management and geographical units.

15. What is Zero-copy cloning?

Ans. In Snowflake, zero-copy cloning is the execution that requires using the keyword "CLONE" to copy the tables, schemas, databases, etc., without changing your actual data. Further, this cloning enables you to have real-time (live) data from production to manage multiple activities.

Related Article: Snowflake Vs Redshift

16. What is Snowpipe?

Ans. Snowpipe is an efficient, user-friendly service for continuous data loading into Snowflake. It optimizes the data loading process through micro-batching and provides immediate data availability for analysis.

17. What is Horizontal scaling and Vertical Scaling?

Ans. Horizontal scaling in Snowflake enhances concurrency through additional virtual warehouses, while vertical scaling optimizes workload processing by choosing larger warehouse sizes. It presents its scalability and performance adaptability.

18. Explain about the database storage layer.

Ans. Snowflake's database storage layer organizes data in an optimized, columnar format, ensuring efficient storage and management of data with advanced organization, compression, and access methodologies

19. What is the Query processing layer?

Ans. Snowflake's query processing layer uses virtual warehouses, each a separate cluster. It ensures isolated and efficient query execution and enhances performance and reliability.

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20. What is the Cloud Service layer?

Ans. The Cloud Services layer in Snowflake manages and coordinates various tasks, including user requests, authentication, and infrastructure management. It demonstrates a seamless integration of services for optimal performance.

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 Snowflake interview questions for Experienced:

21. What is Materialized view?

Ans. Materialized views in Snowflake are pre-computed datasets that enhance query performance, especially for repetitive and complex queries on large datasets, contributing to faster and more efficient data analysis.

22. What is Schema?

Ans. Schemas in Snowflake organize stored data, grouping database objects like tables and views. They facilitate structured data management and efficient use of disk space.

23. What ETL tools are you using in Snowflake?

Ans. Snowflake integrates with various ETL tools, including Etleap, Blendo, Matillion, Hevo Data, StreamSets, and Apache Airflow, catering to diverse data integration and transformation needs.

24. What programming languages are supported in Snowflake?

Ans. Snowflake supports various coding languages, including Go, C, .NET, Java, Python, Node.js, etc., offering flexibility and compatibility for different development environments.

Related Article: Snowflake Vs BigQuery

25. What is a clustering key in Snowflake?

Ans. A clustering key in Snowflake is a subset of table columns that optimize data co-location within the table, which is especially beneficial for large tables with non-sequential DML operations.

26. What is a Stage?

Ans. A Stage in Snowflake is a central area for file uploads. It enables Snowpipe to systematically load files into the database and supports various stage types, including User, Table, and internally named Stages.

27. Is Snowflake OLAP or OLTP?

Ans. Primarily designed as an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) system, Snowflake can also adapt to OLTP scenarios, showcasing its versatility.

28. How can we execute Snowflake Procedure?

Ans. A Snowflake procedure involves executing SQL statements, retrieving query results, and accessing result set metadata. It encapsulates complex business logic within a modular code structure.

29. Does Snowflake maintain stored procedures?

Ans. Snowflake supports stored procedures created via the CREATE PROCEDURE command. It is executed with CALL and incorporates JavaScript APIs for database operations like UPDATE, SELECT, and CREATE.

30. What is a Columnar database?

31. Define Micro Partitions.

Ans. Snowflake offers a robust data partitioning system called "Micro Partitioning," where all the data available in the Snowflake tables is split into micro partitions. Each micro partition holds 50 to 500MB of composing data and is automatically executed across the Snowflake tables.

32. Distinguish between the Star Schema and the Snowflake Schema.

Ans. 

Star Schema:

A star schema contains both fact and dimension tables, and it executes queries in a short time. Its approach is a top-down model, and it covers more space. Also, its design is simpler than that of Snowflake. 

Snowflake Schema:

A Snowflake Schema includes fact, dimension, and sub-dimension tables, and it takes a lot of time to execute queries. Further, its approach is a bottom-up model that takes less space. Moreover, its design is much more complex than a star schema. 

33. How are Snowflake Connectors useful?

Ans. Using the Snowflake connector tool, we can link to the data warehouse platform and perform activities like read/write, massive data loading, and metadata import.

34. Can we connect AWS glue with Snowflake?

Ans. Yes, it is possible. AWS glue offers a wholly managed setting that quickly connects with Snowflake as a data warehouse service. These solutions allow you to handle data ingestion and change rapidly and flexibly.

35. Distinguish between Snowflake and Data Warehouse.

• Ans
• Snowflake is a cloud-based architecture, and Data Warehouse is easy to host on the cloud and on-premise.
• Snowflake offers virtual warehousing features that provide great flexibility, whereas DWH provides customization features.
• Snowflake's architecture uses a hybrid model, whereas the data warehouse uses a shared-nothing structure.

36. How do we create temporary tables?

Ans. For creating temporary tables, use the below syntax:

Create temporary table mytable (id number, creation_date date);

37. How can you run the Snowflake processes?

Ans. To run the Snowflake process, you can go through the steps below:

• Execute a SQL statement
• Carry out the query output
• Pull out the result set metadata

38. Does the Snowflake platform use an Index?

Ans. Snowflake doesn't use indexes, which makes the platform scale to provide benefits for queries.

Conclusion

I hope you have gone through the frequently asked Snowflake interview questions and answers. We have compiled these interview questions to provide the best skills to crack the job interview. We hope these interview questions will help you. You can explore many job offers after getting these skills. Keep an eye out for HKR Trainings blogs for more questions.

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• Snowflake Connector
• Snowflake Data Cloud
• Snowflake Schema
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• Connecting to Snowflake