How did Snowflake fulfill this query?

A sales table FCT_SALES has 100 million records.

The following Query was executed

SELECT COUNT (1) FROM FCT__SALES;

How did Snowflake fulfill this query?
A . Query against the result set cache
B . Query against a virtual warehouse cache
C . Query against the most-recently created micro-partition
D . Query against the metadata excite

View Answer

Answer: D

Explanation:

Snowflake is designed to optimize query performance by utilizing metadata for certain types of queries. When executing a COUNT query, Snowflake can often fulfill the request by accessing metadata about the table’s row count, rather than scanning the entire table or micro-partitions. This is particularly efficient for large tables like FCT_SALES with a significant number of records. The metadata layer maintains statistics about the table, including the row count, which enables

Snowflake to quickly return the result of a COUNT query without the need to perform a full scan.

Reference: Snowflake Documentation on Metadata Management

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