SnowPro Advanced Architect Practice Exam

About the Exam

This certification validates advanced knowledge and skills used to apply comprehensive architect solutions using Snowflake. It tests the ability to design end-to-end data flows, build and deploy architectures that meet business, security, and compliance requirements, select Snowflake and third-party tools to optimize performance, and design shared data sets with Snowflake Marketplace and Data Exchange. It is intended for candidates with 2 or more years of hands-on Snowflake architect experience in production, with SQL-related coding and DevOps/DataOps experience as a plus.

Exam Topics

Architecture Overview20%
Data Ingestion and Data Preparation20%
Data Storage and Processing20%
Secure Data Sharing and Consumption20%
Performance, Cost, and Resource Optimization20%

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Last updated August 27, 2026 at 7:06 AM

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QuestionQ1

Secure Data Sharing and Consumption

The following table is present in the production database:

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A regulatory requirement requires the company to mask the username for events older than six months, determined from the current date when the data is queried.

How can this requirement be met without duplicating the event data, while ensuring it is applied when creating views from the table or cloning the table?

Explanation

A conditional masking policy can mask username dynamically at query time based on event_timestamp, using a condition that compares the event time with the current date minus six months. Attaching the policy to the base-table column makes the masking apply wherever that column is queried, including through views, and preserves the policy association for cloned table metadata. Row access policies restrict which rows are visible, rather than masking individual column values.

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QuestionQ2

Secure Data Sharing and Consumption

How are Snowflake databases created from shares different from standard databases that were not created from shares?

Choose three

Explanation

Snowflake treats a database created from a provider share as an imported database. Imported databases are read-only, and Snowflake does not support creating clones of an imported database or its contained schemas and tables. Time Travel is also unsupported for an imported database and its contained objects.

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Consume imported data | Snowflake Documentation

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QuestionQ3

Performance, Cost, and Resource Optimization

An Architect is designing a Snowflake architecture that must execute Data Analyst reports very quickly. To optimize costs, the virtual warehouse is configured to auto-suspend after 2 minutes of idle time. The Architect runs the queries once in the morning after the data refresh, hoping that all subsequent queries will use the warehouse cache. However, later in the day, subsequent queries run slowly.

Why is this happening?

Explanation

A virtual warehouse’s local data cache is dropped when the warehouse is suspended. An auto-suspend setting of 2 minutes can therefore clear the cache before later reports run, requiring the warehouse to rebuild the cache and causing slower performance. Snowflake recommends at least 10 minutes of auto-suspend for BI and SELECT query warehouses when preserving cache is important.

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Optimizing the warehouse cache

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QuestionQ4

Performance, Cost, and Resource Optimization

An Architect is investigating a long-running statement and must identify the transactions that are blocked and the queries blocking them.

Which views should be used for troubleshooting?

Choose two

Explanation

LOCK_WAIT_HISTORY contains the history of transactions waiting for locks and exposes the blocking queries. QUERY_HISTORY provides the SQL statement and transaction details needed to investigate both the blocked and blocking activity. Snowflake’s documented workflow for examining a long-running statement uses these two Account Usage views together.

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QuestionQ5

Data Storage and Processing

An account is using the default setting for every parameter. The MERGE command updates or deletes target rows that join to multiple source rows.

What will be the outcome of the MERGE statement?

Explanation

For a MERGE in which multiple source rows match a target row for an update or delete, the operation is nondeterministic. ERROR_ON_NONDETERMINISTIC_MERGE defaults to TRUE, so Snowflake returns an error instead of selecting a matching source row arbitrarily. Snowflake MERGE documentation

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Snowflake MERGE documentation

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QuestionQ6

Secure Data Sharing and Consumption

A data share exists between a data provider account and a data consumer account. Five tables from the provider account are shared with the consumer account. The consumer role has been granted the IMPORTED PRIVILEGES privilege.

What occurs in the consumer account when a new table (table_6) is added to the provider schema?

Explanation

A newly created table is not automatically available through an existing Snowflake share. The provider must explicitly grant SELECT on EDW.ACCOUNTING.Table_6 to PSHARE_EDW_4TEST. Because the consumer role already has IMPORTED PRIVILEGES on the imported database, it can access the table as soon as the provider adds it to that share.

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