Free Practice Questions for Snowflake SOL-C01 Exam

Snowflake uses a hierarchical Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model. When Role A is granted to Role B, the higher-level role (Role B) inherits all privileges of the lower-level role (Role A). This upward inheritance allows broad administrative roles (such as SYSADMIN) to automatically inherit permissions granted to subordinate roles.

Key principle:privilege inheritance flows upward, not downward.

• Parent roles inherit from child roles.

• Child roles donotinherit from parent roles.

Sibling roles do not share privileges unless explicitly granted.

Thus, roles above a given role in the hierarchy inherit privileges, making option C correct.

Options A and D incorrectly describe downward inheritance, which Snowflake does not perform.

Option B (same-level inheritance) also does not occur unless privileges are explicitly granted.

This hierarchical model simplifies governance by allowing higher-level administrative roles to centrally manage access across multiple subordinate roles.

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The SELECT * statement instructs Snowflake to returnall columnsfrom the referenced table or view. This is commonly used during data exploration, debugging, initial data profiling, and validation steps. It allows users to quickly view the complete dataset structure without manually specifying each column name.

However, while SELECT * retrieves all columns, it does not limit the number of rows. To restrict rows, developers must include aLIMITclause (e.g., SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 10;).

The query does not automatically apply DISTINCT or primary key filtering—Snowflake returns all rows exactly as stored unless additional filtering, WHERE conditions, or ordering are provided.

Though SELECT * is convenient, Snowflake best practices recommend explicitly selecting columns in production workloads to optimize performance and avoid unnecessary scanning of unused fields.

Snowflake cloning is a metadata-only operation at creation. Both the clone and source share micro-partitions until changes occur (copy-on-write).

They are independent and do not auto-sync.

They can be made at the database, schema, or table level.

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A virtual warehouse in Snowflake is acompute resourcethat supplies CPU, memory, and temporary storage used to process SQL queries, perform data loading, execute DML operations, and run procedural logic. Warehouses are elastic, can be resized on demand, suspended to save costs, and automatically resumed when needed.

Virtual warehouses donotstore data—data is kept in Snowflake’s centralized storage layer. They also are not user accounts; user accounts belong to Snowflake’s identity management system. Worksheets are UI components in Snowsight or Classic Console used to write and run SQL, not compute resources.

Thus, virtual warehouses are Snowflake's compute engine, enabling all processing without managing physical infrastructure.

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Directory tables allow Snowflake to expose metadata about files stored in an external stage, enabling users to query file listings using SQL. To enable a directory table, the correct approach is to update an existing external stage using:

ALTER STAGE my_stage SET DIRECTORY = (ENABLE = TRUE);

This enables automatic synchronization of file metadata from cloud providers such as AWS S3, Azure Blob, or Google Cloud Storage.

Incorrect options:

Directory tables arenot enabled by default.

There is noCREATE DIRECTORY TABLEcommand in Snowflake.

Creating a view cannot enable directory table functionality.

Once enabled, users can query:

SELECT * FROM DIRECTORY(@my_stage);

to retrieve file names, sizes, MD5 hashes, and timestamps.

Snowflake’s RBAC security model revolves aroundUsers,Roles, andPrivileges. Users represent individual identities or service accounts. Roles group privileges and are assigned to users. Privileges define specific actions that can be performed on objects (e.g., SELECT, INSERT, OWNERSHIP). “Permissions” is not a formal RBAC component—permissions are effectively the result of privileges assigned to roles. Therefore, the three core RBAC components are Users, Roles, and Privileges.

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A red checkmark in Snowflake Notebooks indicates that the cell encountered anerrorduring execution. This visual indicator helps users quickly identify issues so they can inspect the error message and adjust code accordingly. Successful execution shows a green checkmark, while running cells show a spinner. Snowflake notebooks do not include a “paused” state for notebook cells.

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The CREATE FILE FORMAT command creates a file format object in Snowflake that defines how data files should be interpreted when loading or unloading. Parameters in the definition include file type (for example, CSV, JSON, PARQUET), field delimiters, compression, quoting rules, and other parsing options. Once created, this file format object can be referenced by COPY INTO commands or external table definitions to ensure consistent handling of files.

Deleting a file format is performed using DROP FILE FORMAT. Modifying an existing file format is done with ALTER FILE FORMAT. Creating a new table is achieved with CREATE TABLE. Therefore, the purpose of CREATE FILE FORMAT is specifically to define how Snowflake should process data files.

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Asharein Snowflake is a securable object that contains all the metadata required to provide access to selected data—typically tables, views, and secure views—to other Snowflake accounts. The share object defines which objects are included and what privileges (e.g., SELECT, USAGE) consumers receive.

A share does not store data itself; it provides a reference to the provider’s underlying micro-partitioned storage, enabling real-time, zero-copy access.

Reader accounts (option A) can consume shares but do not define them.

Replication objects (option C) relate to database replication, not data sharing.

Option D is incorrect because Snowflake does not generate share-specific metrics objects.

Thus, the purpose of a share is to encapsulate all metadata required for secure, controlled data sharing between Snowflake accounts.

TheCOMPLETEfunction is the only Cortex LLM function where the user can explicitly specify the model name (e.g., Mistral, Snowflake Arctic, Meta Llama models).

SUMMARIZE, SENTIMENT, and TRANSLATE are task-specific functions that use built-in, preselected models anddo not allowmodel selection.