Time Travel retention periods in Snowflake - Practice Problems & Coding Challenges

Challenge - 5 Problems

🧠 Conceptual

intermediate

Understanding Time Travel retention limits

Snowflake's Time Travel feature allows querying historical data. What is the maximum retention period for Time Travel on a standard Snowflake account?

A 1 day (24 hours)

B 7 days

C 90 days

D 365 days

💡 Hint

Think about the default maximum retention period for Time Travel in Snowflake standard editions.

Standard Snowflake accounts support Time Travel retention up to 1 day (24 hours). Extended retention (up to 90 days) is available only with Enterprise edition or higher.

❓ Configuration

intermediate

Setting Time Travel retention period on a table

You want to set the Time Travel retention period to 3 days on a Snowflake table named sales_data. Which SQL command correctly sets this retention period?

A ALTER TABLE sales_data SET TIME_TRAVEL_RETENTION_DAYS = 3;

B ALTER TABLE sales_data SET DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS = 3;

C ALTER TABLE sales_data SET RETENTION_PERIOD = 3;

D ALTER TABLE sales_data SET DATA_RETENTION_DAYS = 3;

💡 Hint

Look for the exact property name Snowflake uses for retention period in table alteration.

The correct syntax to set Time Travel retention period on a table is ALTER TABLE <table_name> SET DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS = <days>;

❓ Architecture

advanced

Impact of Time Travel retention on storage costs

How does increasing the Time Travel retention period affect Snowflake storage costs?

A Storage costs increase because Snowflake retains more historical data for the longer retention period.

B Storage costs decrease because older data is compressed more efficiently with longer retention.

C Storage costs remain the same regardless of Time Travel retention period.

D Storage costs increase only if data is deleted, otherwise no change.

💡 Hint

Think about how storing more historical data affects storage usage.

Longer Time Travel retention means Snowflake keeps more historical data, which increases storage consumption and costs.

❓ service_behavior

advanced

Behavior of Time Travel after retention period expires

What happens if you try to query data using Time Travel after the retention period has expired?

A Snowflake returns null values for the requested historical data.

B Snowflake automatically extends the retention period and returns the data.

C Snowflake returns an error indicating the data is no longer available for Time Travel.

D Snowflake returns the latest data ignoring the Time Travel timestamp.

💡 Hint

Consider what happens when historical data is purged after retention.

Once the Time Travel retention period expires, historical data is purged and queries referencing that time will fail with an error.

❓ security

expert

Time Travel retention and data privacy compliance

Your company must comply with data privacy laws that require permanent deletion of sensitive data within 30 days. How does Snowflake's Time Travel retention period affect compliance?

A You must manually purge Time Travel data after 30 days to comply with deletion requirements.

B Time Travel retention does not affect data deletion; once deleted, data is immediately removed from all storage.

C You can keep the default retention period since Time Travel data is encrypted and inaccessible to users.

D You must set the Time Travel retention period to 0 days to ensure data is permanently deleted immediately.

💡 Hint

Think about how Time Travel retains deleted data and its impact on permanent deletion.

Time Travel retains deleted data for the retention period. To comply with strict deletion laws, retention must be set to 0 to avoid keeping deleted data.