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COF-C02 · Question #218

Which statement describes pruning?

The correct answer is A. The filtering or disregarding of micro-partitions that are not needed to return a query. Pruning is Snowflake's mechanism of skipping (filtering out) micro-partitions that are not relevant to a query's WHERE clause or join conditions. Snowflake stores min/max metadata for each micro-partition, and the query optimizer uses this metadata to eliminate partitions that…

Performance Concepts

Question

Which statement describes pruning?

Options

  • AThe filtering or disregarding of micro-partitions that are not needed to return a query.
  • BThe return of micro-partitions values that overlap with each other to reduce a query's runtime.
  • CA service that is handled by the Snowflake Cloud Services layer to optimize caching.
  • DThe ability to allow the result of a query to be accessed as if it were a table.

How the community answered

(66 responses)
  • A
    88% (58)
  • B
    8% (5)
  • C
    2% (1)
  • D
    3% (2)

Explanation

Pruning is Snowflake's mechanism of skipping (filtering out) micro-partitions that are not relevant to a query's WHERE clause or join conditions. Snowflake stores min/max metadata for each micro-partition, and the query optimizer uses this metadata to eliminate partitions that cannot contain matching rows-avoiding unnecessary I/O and speeding up queries. Option B is the opposite of pruning (overlap between partitions reduces its effectiveness). Option C describes caching, not pruning. Option D describes a materialized view or CTE, not pruning.

Topics

#Pruning#Micro-partitions#Query Optimization#Performance

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