DEA-C02 Storage and Data Protection Practice Question
A data engineer is creating a new table to hold a large volume of raw clickstream events that are loaded continuously and only retained for reporting within the same day. The team wants to minimize storage costs while still allowing recovery of rows modified within the last 24 hours. Which table type best fits these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is choosing a permanent table because it also supports 1-day Time Travel, overlooking that permanent tables additionally incur 7-day Fail-safe storage that transient tables 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
✓
A transient table with DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS set to 1
Transient tables are the right choice for large, short-lived datasets because they support up to 1 day of Time Travel for recent-change recovery while avoiding Fail-safe storage entirely. Permanent tables would add unnecessary Fail-safe cost, temporary tables are session-scoped, and external tables do not provide Snowflake-managed Time Travel over their files.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
An external table over a cloud storage stage with a 1-day retention policy
Why it's wrong here
External tables read data in place from a stage and do not store rows in Snowflake, so Time Travel and retention settings do not apply to the underlying files. Recovery of modified rows would depend on the cloud provider's versioning, not Snowflake. This does not meet the requirement of Snowflake-managed 24-hour recovery.
- ✗
A temporary table with DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS set to 1
Why it's wrong here
Temporary tables are session-scoped and are dropped at the end of the session, so they cannot serve as a durable landing area for continuously loaded events. They also support at most 1 day of Time Travel but disappear when the session ends, which would break downstream reporting. They are intended for session-local scratch work, not persistent ingestion.
- ✓
A transient table with DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS set to 1
Why this is correct
Transient tables support up to 1 day of Time Travel on Enterprise Edition, which satisfies the 24-hour recovery need, and they do not incur Fail-safe storage. This makes them well suited for high-volume, short-lived data such as raw clickstream events. The absence of Fail-safe directly reduces storage cost, matching the team's objective.
- ✗
A permanent table with DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS set to 1
Why it's wrong here
A permanent table with a 1-day retention does allow 24-hour recovery, but it also incurs Fail-safe storage for 7 days after any data is deleted or the table is dropped. For high-churn clickstream data that is discarded daily, that Fail-safe overhead is unnecessary cost. A transient table achieves the same recovery goal without the Fail-safe burden.
About these practice questions
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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
This DEA-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Snowflake certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DEA-C02 exam.