Which operation can be performed on Snowflake external tables?

The correct answer is B. JOIN. External tables in Snowflake are read-only metadata overlays on files stored in an external stage (e.g., S3, Azure Blob, GCS). Because they do not own the underlying data, DML operations like INSERT (A) are not supported. RENAME (C) is not a valid operation on external tables…

Snowflake Cloud Data Platform Features and Architecture

Question

Options

AINSERT
BJOIN
CRENAME
DALTER

How the community answered

(18 responses)

B
89% (16)
C
6% (1)
D
6% (1)

Explanation

External tables in Snowflake are read-only metadata overlays on files stored in an external stage (e.g., S3, Azure Blob, GCS). Because they do not own the underlying data, DML operations like INSERT (A) are not supported. RENAME (C) is not a valid operation on external tables. While ALTER (D) has very limited support (e.g., refreshing metadata), it cannot be used for the typical structural changes allowed on regular tables. However, JOIN (B) is fully supported - external tables can be joined with internal Snowflake tables or other external tables in SELECT queries, which is a common pattern for blending cloud-stored raw data with managed warehouse data.

Topics

#External Tables#JOIN operations#Read-only tables#Data querying

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