Snowflake SnowPro Certification Practice Test

How large should a table be for Clustering Keys to significantly improve performance?

1. Gigabyte (GB)

2. Multi-Terabyte (TB)

3. Petabyte (PB)

4. Small tables are sufficient

The correct answer is: Multi-Terabyte (TB)

Clustering keys in Snowflake are particularly beneficial for larger tables, as they help to optimize query performance by improving data retrieval times. The basic principle behind clustering is that it organizes the data within the table based on the values specified in the clustering key, ensuring that related rows are stored closer together physically. This organization is particularly advantageous when dealing with large volumes of data, where the underlying data can become dispersed across different locations in storage. For tables in the multi-terabyte range, the benefits of clustering become more pronounced. At this scale, scanning through data can become time-consuming, leading to increased query wait times. Clustering helps mitigate this by allowing the query engine to skip scanning over large chunks of data that do not meet the criteria specified in the query, thus improving performance significantly. In contrast, smaller tables may not require clustering keys to achieve optimal performance because the volume of data is manageable, and the performance difference may not be as significant. Similarly, while gigabyte-sized tables might experience some performance improvements with clustering, these may not be substantial enough to warrant the overhead of implementing and maintaining clustering keys. As for petabyte-sized tables, the extreme volume would necessitate advanced clustering strategies, but multi-terabyte tables represent a more practical threshold where clustering