ARA-C01 Snowflake Architecture Practice Question
An architect is designing a staging area for a data pipeline where data will only be needed for 24 hours before being transformed and moved. Which TWO table types would be most cost-effective for this scenario? (Select TWO)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often select permanent tables for short-lived staging data, forgetting that permanent tables incur unnecessary 7-day Fail-safe storage costs that transient and temporary tables successfully avoid.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Transient tables, as they do not incur Fail-safe storage costs.
Temporary and Transient tables are the most cost-effective choices for short-lived data. Temporary tables are tied to a session, making them ideal for ETL steps. Transient tables persist across sessions but lack Fail-safe storage, reducing costs for data that can be easily recreated. Both types avoid the 7-day Fail-safe storage charges associated with Permanent tables.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Permanent tables with a 1-day Time Travel retention period.
Why it's wrong here
Permanent tables always include a 7-day Fail-safe period after the Time Travel period expires. For staging data that is only needed for 24 hours, paying for 7 days of Fail-safe storage is an unnecessary expense. Even with a short Time Travel window, the Fail-safe cost makes this the least cost-effective option for transient staging data.
- ✓
Transient tables, as they do not incur Fail-safe storage costs.
Why this is correct
Transient tables are designed specifically for data that does not require the high-availability protection of Fail-safe. They support up to 1 day of Time Travel, allowing for recovery from accidental errors during the ETL process, but they completely bypass the 7-day Fail-safe period, significantly reducing storage costs for short-term staging data.
- ✓
Temporary tables, which are automatically dropped at the end of the session.
Why this is correct
Temporary tables are excellent for intermediate ETL steps within a single session. They do not incur Fail-safe costs and are automatically cleaned up by Snowflake when the session ends. This ensures that staging data does not linger and consume storage space, making them a very efficient and low-cost architectural choice for session-specific tasks.
- ✗
External tables pointing to a folder in an S3 bucket.
Why it's wrong here
While external tables do not store data in Snowflake, they are generally slower for transformations and joins than internal tables. For a high-performance staging area, the overhead of querying external cloud storage for every transformation step often outweighs the storage cost savings, making them less ideal for active ETL processing compared to transient or temporary tables.
- ✗
Materialized views created on top of the source external stage.
Why it's wrong here
Materialized views are not a table type; they are pre-computed result sets used to speed up specific queries. They incur their own storage and background maintenance costs (serverless compute). Using them for a 24-hour staging area would be architecturally complex and likely more expensive than simply using a transient table for the raw data.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Snowflake exam blueprint
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