SnowPro Core Certification COF-C02 Book

Snowflake's unique architecture is described as a multi-cluster, shared data architecture that leverages massively parallel processing (MPP). This architecture separates compute and storage resources, enabling Snowflake to scale them independently. It does not use a single cluster or rely solely on symmetric multiprocessing (SMP); rather, it uses a combination of shared-nothing architecture for compute clusters (virtual warehouses) and a centralized storage layer for data, optimizing for both performance and scalability.

References:

Snowflake Documentation: Snowflake Architecture Overview

The VARIANT data type in Snowflake is used to store JSON key-value pairs along with other semi-structured data formats like AVRO, BSON, and XML. The VARIANT data type allows for flexible and dynamic data structures within a single column, accommodating complex and nested data. This data type is crucial for handling semi-structured data in Snowflake, enabling users to perform SQL operations on JSON objects and arrays directly.

References:

Snowflake Documentation: Semi-structured Data Types

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In the Query Profile of Snowflake, the TableScan operator represents the access to a single table. This operator indicates that the query execution involved reading data from a table stored in Snowflake. TableScan is a fundamental operation in query execution plans, showing how the database engine retrieves data directly from tables as part of processing a query.

References:

Snowflake Documentation: Understanding the Query Profile