Snowflake ARA-C01: SnowPro Advanced: Architect

Last checked October 22, 2026 against the official Snowflake exam page.

1. Question 1Security and Governance Architecture

   A company wants employees to authenticate to Snowflake with tokens issued by its central identity provider rather than with Snowflake passwords. Which object should be configured?

   1. AA resource monitor in Snowflake
   2. BA network policy for IP allow and block lists
   3. CAn External OAuth security integration
   4. DA masking policy on email columns
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   Correct answer: C

   An External OAuth security integration lets Snowflake accept access tokens issued by the customer's identity provider. Network policies restrict source addresses, masking policies hide values, and resource monitors track credits.

2. Question 2Data Engineering and Pipeline Design

   A task must run only when its source stream actually contains change records. Which task definition achieves this?

   1. AWAIT FOR NEW CDC ROWS IN orders_stream
   2. BWHEN SYSTEM$STREAM_HAS_DATA('orders_stream')
   3. CSCHEDULE = 'USING CRON * * * * *' ON_TICK
   4. DAFTER orders_stream_raw_ingest_v2
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   Correct answer: B

   The WHEN clause with SYSTEM$STREAM_HAS_DATA skips runs when the stream is empty, which avoids idle warehouse use. A schedule alone runs regardless of data, and AFTER links tasks rather than streams, while WAIT FOR is not a task clause.

3. Question 3Data Modeling and Architecture Design

   An IoT platform receives events whose nested attributes change frequently across firmware versions. The team wants to keep the raw payloads queryable without a rigid schema for each change. Which storage design fits best?

   1. AStore the raw payloads as BLOB values in one column and decode the bytes with custom UDFs inside each query
   2. BLand payloads in a VARIANT column and project frequently used attributes into typed columns
   3. CSplit every attribute into its own table with a foreign key to the event row
   4. DKeep payloads as large VARCHAR text in a single column and parse each one with regular expressions at query time
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   Correct answer: B

   VARIANT keeps the raw semi-structured payload intact, and promoting the hot attributes to typed columns preserves performance for common queries. BLOB and large VARCHAR hide structure, and one table per attribute makes ingestion and queries fragile.

4. Question 4Performance Optimization and Cost Management

   Which two actions reduce cost for a long-running ETL workload? (Choose two.)

   1. AKeep all workloads on one shared warehouse at maximum concurrency
   2. BRight-size the warehouse and let it auto-suspend when idle
   3. CSeparate ELT and BI workloads onto different warehouses
   4. DRun every job on a 6XL warehouse around the clock
   5. EDisable auto-suspend to avoid cold starts
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   Correct answer: B, C

   Right-sizing with auto-suspend stops idle billing, and separate warehouses isolate workloads so each is sized for its own needs. Oversized always-on warehouses and disabling suspend increase cost, and a single saturated warehouse slows critical jobs.

5. Question 5Data Sharing, Replication and Business Continuity

   A company must have its databases and roles copied to a second region and promoted there if the primary region becomes unavailable. Which Snowflake feature provides this?

   1. AA secure data share with no replication
   2. BA zero-copy clone refreshed monthly
   3. CTime Travel with a 90-day retention period
   4. DReplication with failover groups
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   Correct answer: D

   Failover groups replicate selected databases, roles and other objects to a secondary account or region and let the secondary be promoted during an outage. Clones are point-in-time copies in the same account, shares do not provide recovery, and Time Travel covers history rather than regional failover.