ARA-C01 Data Engineering Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  ON_ERROR = 'ABORT_STATEMENT'

  Why it's wrong here

  Setting ON_ERROR to ABORT_STATEMENT is the default behavior, where the entire load operation fails if a single error is encountered. This is not suitable for scenarios where the goal is to load as much valid data as possible while simply logging and ignoring the problematic records.

• ✓

  ON_ERROR = 'CONTINUE'

  Why this is correct

  The CONTINUE option instructs Snowflake to ignore errors and keep loading data from the file. This is a common pattern in data engineering for handling 'dirty' source data, allowing the pipeline to remain resilient while providing a mechanism to audit and fix rejected rows after the load completes.

• ✗

  ON_ERROR = 'SKIP_FILE'

  Why it's wrong here

  SKIP_FILE causes Snowflake to stop loading the current file as soon as an error is found and move on to the next file in the set. While this prevents the entire statement from failing, it results in the loss of valid data from the skipped file, which is undesirable.

• ✗

  VALIDATION_MODE = 'RETURN_ERRORS'

  Why it's wrong here

  The VALIDATION_MODE parameter is used to check for errors without actually loading any data. While 'RETURN_ERRORS' is useful for debugging, it does not fulfill the requirement of continuing the load process and inserting valid records into the target table during the execution.