Snowflake SnowPro Certification Practice Test

In what scenario would a Data Sharing Consumer incur additional costs?

1. When using shared data only

2. When accessing data across different regions

3. When performing compute tasks on shared data

4. When uploading data

The correct answer is: When performing compute tasks on shared data

The correct choice pertains to a scenario where a Data Sharing Consumer incurs additional costs due to performing compute tasks on shared data. In the Snowflake environment, while shared data allows consumers to access and utilize data without duplicating it, any compute operations—such as queries or transformations—trigger processing on the consumer’s side. This processing incurs costs as it utilizes the compute resources allocated to the consumer's Snowflake account. It is essential to understand that, in this model, the costs associated with compute are separate from data access costs. Therefore, when consumers actively engage with the shared data by executing queries or running analytics, they will be billed for the compute resources they utilize, which can accumulate based on the intensity and frequency of their operations. The other scenarios do not generally lead to higher costs for the consumer. For instance, using shared data on its own typically does not incur extra fees, as it is a fundamental benefit of Snowflake's data sharing capability. Accessing data across different regions may involve additional latency but does not inherently add costs related to data sharing. Likewise, simply uploading data would not incur additional costs specific to the shared data mechanism, but rather costs associated with storage and compute resources allocated for that particular consumer's account.