What would cause this to occur?

A DevOps team has a requirement for recovery of staging tables used in a complex set of data pipelines. The staging tables are all located in the same staging schema. One of the requirements is to have online recovery of data on a rolling 7-day basis.

After setting up the DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS at the database level, certain tables remain unrecoverable past 1 day.

What would cause this to occur? (Choose two.)
A . The staging schema has not been setup for MANAGED ACCESS.
B . The DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS for the staging schema has been set to 1 day.
C . The tables exceed the 1 TB limit for data recovery.
D . The staging tables are of the TRANSIENT type.
E . The DevOps role should be granted ALLOW_RECOVERY privilege on the staging schema.

View Answer

Answer: B, D

Explanation:

The DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS parameter controls the Time Travel retention period for an object (database, schema, or table) in Snowflake. This parameter specifies the number of days for which historical data is preserved and can be accessed using Time Travel operations (SELECT, CREATE … CLONE, UNDROP)1.

The requirement for recovery of staging tables on a rolling 7-day basis means that the DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS parameter should be set to 7 at the database level. However, this parameter can be overridden at the lower levels (schema or table) if they have a different value1. Therefore, one possible cause for certain tables to remain unrecoverable past 1 day is that the DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS for the staging schema has been set to 1 day. This would override the database level setting and limit the Time Travel retention period for all the tables in the schema to 1 day. To fix this, the parameter should be unset or set to 7 at the schema level1. Therefore, option B is correct.

Another possible cause for certain tables to remain unrecoverable past 1 day is that the staging tables are of the TRANSIENT type. Transient tables are tables that do not have a Fail-safe period and can have a Time Travel retention period of either 0 or 1 day. Transient tables are suitable for temporary or intermediate data that can be easily reproduced or replicated2. To fix this, the tables should be created as permanent tables, which can have a Time Travel retention period of up to 90 days1. Therefore, option D is correct.

Option A is incorrect because the MANAGED ACCESS feature is not related to the data recovery requirement. MANAGED ACCESS is a feature that allows granting access privileges to objects without explicitly granting the privileges to roles. It does not affect the Time Travel retention period or the data availability3.

Option C is incorrect because there is no 1 TB limit for data recovery in Snowflake. The data storage size does not affect the Time Travel retention period or the data availability4.

Option E is incorrect because there is no ALLOW_RECOVERY privilege in Snowflake. The privilege required to perform Time Travel operations is SELECT, which allows querying historical data in tables5.

Reference: Understanding & Using Time Travel: Transient Tables: Managed Access: Understanding Storage Cost: Table Privileges