DEA-C02 Storage and Data Protection Practice Question
A data engineer manages a transient table named STG_EVENTS in a Snowflake Enterprise Edition account. The table has a DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS setting of 1. The engineer wants Time Travel to retain data for 30 days for this table. What will happen if the engineer executes ALTER TABLE STG_EVENTS SET DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS = 30?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that because the account is Enterprise Edition, any table can be given a 30-day Time Travel retention, when transient tables are capped at 1 day.
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
✓
The statement will fail with an error because transient tables support a maximum Time Travel retention of 1 day.
Transient tables are limited to a maximum Time Travel retention of 1 day. Attempting to set a higher value such as 30 days causes Snowflake to reject the ALTER TABLE statement with an error. To achieve 30 days of Time Travel, the table must be a permanent table in an account with Enterprise Edition or higher. The table type is the deciding factor.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The retention period will be set to 30 days, but only if the table has not been cloned previously.
Why it's wrong here
Prior cloning of a table does not change its allowed Time Travel retention. The restriction comes from the table type being transient, which caps retention at 1 day. Cloning history is irrelevant to the DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS limit. This option invents a cloning dependency that Snowflake does not enforce for retention settings on transient tables.
- ✗
The retention period will be set to 30 days but Fail-safe will still be disabled for the table.
Why it's wrong here
Transient tables do have Fail-safe disabled, but that is not the reason the ALTER fails. The blocker is the 1-day Time Travel cap on transient tables. The statement is rejected outright, so no retention change occurs. This distractor confuses the Fail-safe behavior of transient tables with the Time Travel retention limit that actually prevents the change.
- ✓
The statement will fail with an error because transient tables support a maximum Time Travel retention of 1 day.
Why this is correct
For transient tables, the DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS parameter is capped at 1. Snowflake returns an error when you attempt to set a higher value. To get 30 days of Time Travel, the object must be a permanent table in an Enterprise Edition (or higher) account. The transient table type is the constraint here, not the account edition.
- ✗
The retention period will be set to 30 days, and Time Travel will retain data for 30 days.
Why it's wrong here
Transient tables have a maximum Time Travel retention of 1 day, so a 30-day setting is not permitted. Snowflake rejects the ALTER statement with an error rather than silently accepting a value it cannot honor. Anyone assuming transient tables behave like permanent tables with adjustable retention will pick this, but the transient table type caps retention at one day regardless of edition.
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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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