SnowPro Advanced Architect Certification Guide
Preparation, checks and hints needed to clear SnowPro Advanced Architect Certification in your 1st attempt.
SnowPro Advanced, Architect Certification tests your real time hands on and in depth understanding of the Snowflake topics. The knowledge you acquired for SnowPro Core Certifications is the foundation and few of the exam questions can be repeated. Do revise if there is a long gap in taking up Architect certification after your SnowPro Core Certification — https://snowflakewiki.medium.com/snowflake-get-self-started-6859d4f2112c
Important for Preparation -
Visit the SnowPro Advanced: Architect Exam Guide — https://learn.snowflake.com/courses/course-v1:snowflake+CERT-SPC-GUIDE+A/about?_ga=2.234095838.1541219588.1647157808-1471695939.1646832664
Give the special attention to the following. (Note — It can get changed from time to time) -
Total Number of Questions
Question Types
Time Limit
Then go through each and every topic that is mentioned in the Exam Domain section in detail (Note — It can get changed from time to time).
Important Topics -
As questions range from direct to scenario based, give special focus on the following topics along with pointers mentioned below going through the links provided.
Architecture, Cost & Performance
Query Profile, Query Performance, Cache, Micro Partitions, Clustering, Warehouse
Have good understanding of how to interpret the query profiles, identify the bottle necks, how to improve query performance, how cache is being used, how data is in micro partitions, how clustering is impacting
Data spilling — Causes and Remedy
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/ui-query-profile.html
Scenarios how to best utilize result cache and warehouse cache
What types of query leverage metadata cache
https://community.snowflake.com/s/article/Caching-in-Snowflake-Data-Warehouse
How to choose a clustering key?
How to define and drop clustering key?
What is clustering depth and overlap depth?
How do you view/monitor clustering information?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/tables-clustering-micropartitions.html
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/tables-clustering-keys.html
What considerations are taken into account to choose the warehouse size?
When do we have to increase or decrease warehouse size and when we have to alter min & max clusters to optimize performance?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/warehouses-considerations.html
When would there be cost associated with cloud services?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/credits.html
Database objects
Difference between Permanent, Transient, Temporary tables?
Where and how many ways can we define the file formats?
What are different kind of stages? How do we delete the data from stages?
Materialized view vs Normal View vs Secure View — How are they different? use cases? how query plans change? cost implications? maintenance?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/views-materialized.html
ETL Pipelines with Data loading (Copy & Snowpipe) and Unloading
What are the optimal file sizes for data loading?
What are the default and maximum file sizes for data unloading?
Use case of VALIDATION_MODE with COPY_OPTIONS
What kind of stages supported by Snowpipe?
What are the different Endpoint and response codes of Snowpipe REST API?
How streams and tasks work?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-load-overview.html
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/sql/copy-into-table.html
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-load-snowpipe-rest-apis.html
Cloning
What objects can be cloned and what objects cannot be cloned?
What are the privilege's carried over with cloning?
Replication
What objects can be replicated and what objects cannot be replicated?
What are the Limitations and considerations of replication?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/database-replication-intro.html
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/database-replication-considerations.html
Data Sharing
What objects can be shared and what objects cannot be shared?
How compute recourses are utilized?
What are the privilege's associated?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-sharing-intro.html
Kafka connector
Go in detail related to Kafka connector workflow and the objects that would be created, schema of the tables for kafka topics and fault tolerance.
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/kafka-connector-overview.html
Access Control (RBAC & DAC)
What are the objects and sequence of logical container?
How to grant privilege's to users?
How to check what privilege's are with a role?
How to check the access history?
https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/security-access-control-overview.html
SQL
How to query JSON data columns — Syntax?
Different ways to create a Table — with data, without data, clone?
Different date and timestamp options
How to treat NULLs of both structured and semi-structured data? How to cast empty strings as NULL?
When to use commands of show, list, remove and how to store the result set of show command?
How creating tables and columns with mixed cases effect the querying?
https://snowflakewiki.medium.com/case-sensitivity-in-snowflake-38182abe2265
Exam Day Tips -
- Don’t get stuck and flag the questions you may be confused during the exam and proceed further. Many a case, you can get hint in the following questions asked during the certification.
- If you are left with time, do revisit all the questions and cross check your answers (especially the multiple choice and scenario based ones)
Good luck for exam and get Snowed at Advanced Level!
References: https://www.snowflake.com/
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