SOL-C01 Exam Dumps - SnowPro Associate: Platform Certification Exam

Snowflake supports theEXCLUDEkeyword to simplify queries when excluding certain columns from a SELECT * operation. SELECT * EXCLUDE (column1, column2) reduces verbosity and enhances maintainability, especially when table schemas evolve. Explicitly listing all columns is possible but inefficient. Snowflake does not support REMOVE functions for columns nor an OMIT clause. EXCLUDE is the correct and official mechanism.

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Aprivate listingis shared only with explicitly selected Snowflake accounts, giving providers fine-grained control over who can access their data. This is ideal for partner organizations, internal business units, or customers requiring restricted access. Apublic listing, on the other hand, is accessible to all Snowflake users via the Marketplace, making it available for broad distribution. Pricing models for both types can be free or paid; neither category inherently requires payment. Both listing types share data, not code. Public listings are not restricted to Snowflake employees—they are open to the entire Snowflake ecosystem. The distinction lies entirely in access scope: targeted (private) vs. universal (public).

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Snowflake provides multipledate and time data typesto handle various temporal workloads. TheDATEtype stores only the calendar date (year, month, day), suitable for dimensional modeling, slowly changing dimensions, and calendar-related analytics.

TIMESTAMPrepresents a point in time and includes sub-second precision. Snowflake supports multiple variants:

TIMESTAMP_NTZ(no time zone)

TIMESTAMP_LTZ(local time zone)

TIMESTAMP_TZ(explicit time zone)

These options allow flexibility for global operations, event logs, and time-series analytics.

DATETIMEis an alias forTIMESTAMP_NTZ, meaning it stores both date and time but without time-zone awareness. It is commonly used in ETL, application logs, and system-generated events.

TIMEDATEis not a valid Snowflake data type and does not exist in Snowflake’s type system.

These temporal types support extensive built-in datetime functions, automatic casting, and integration with semi-structured data through VARIANT.

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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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TheCloud Services Layeris responsible for Snowflake’s global security, coordination, and metadata management. It orchestrates all authentication and authorization processes, including username/password login, MFA, OAuth, SSO, key-pair authentication, and integration with enterprise identity providers. It also manages role-based access control (RBAC), privilege enforcement, session management, and secure query orchestration.

This layer centralizes encryption policy enforcement, including the management of Snowflake-managed and customer-managed encryption keys (Tri-Secret Secure). While all data stored and transmitted in Snowflake is encrypted by default, it is the Cloud Services Layer that handles the key lifecycle, rotation, and hierarchy.

The Compute Layer only runs queries.

The Storage Layer keeps compressed, encrypted columnar data but does not manage security controls.

The Query Processing Layer executes SQL but does not manage authentication or RBAC.

Thus, the Cloud Services Layer is the authoritative control plane for Snowflake security.

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Snowflake Data Exchange is not enabled by default. Accounts must open a support request to Snowflake Support, which then activates the feature. It cannot be enabled via UI or SQL. After activation, administrators may create private exchanges and listings.

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PARSE_DOCUMENT extracts text and, depending on mode, layout information from supported document formats. The function currently supportsPDF,PPTX, andDOCXfiles. For PDFs, it can perform OCR to extract scanned text or use LAYOUT mode to detect tables and structured regions. For PPTX files, it extracts slide text and content. For DOCX files, the function captures text and applies layout analysis. XLSX files are not supported—Excel content requires different extraction methods. PARSE_DOCUMENT enables automated document intelligence workflows entirely inside Snowflake, eliminating the need for external OCR or parsing services.

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TheACCOUNTADMINrole is Snowflake’s highest-privileged system-defined role. It provides complete administrative authority across the entire Snowflake account. Its functions include:

Managing global account parameters, replication settings, business continuity, failover groups, and region configurations

Administering billing, resource monitoring, and governance

Granting and revoking privileges across all objects and roles

Overseeing role hierarchy, including SECURITYADMIN and SYSADMIN

It is typically reserved for platform owners and security/governance teams, following least-privilege principles.

“Create and manage databases” is primarily a SYSADMIN responsibility.

“Monitor query performance” can be accomplished by roles with MONITOR privileges; it is not exclusive to ACCOUNTADMIN.

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