Which stages support external tables?

Question

Options

• AInternal stages only; within a single Snowflake account
• BInternal stages only; from any Snowflake account in the organization
• CExternal stages only; from any region, and any cloud provider
• DExternal stages only; only on the same region and cloud provider as the Snowflake account

• B
  6% (1)
• C
  88% (14)
• D
  6% (1)

Explanation

Option C is correct because external tables in Snowflake can only be built on external stages - stages that point to cloud storage outside Snowflake (S3, Azure Blob Storage, GCS). Since the underlying data resides in external cloud storage, Snowflake imposes no restriction on region or cloud provider; you can query data stored anywhere.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A & B are both wrong for the same reason: internal stages store data inside Snowflake's managed storage, which cannot back an external table. Whether the internal stage is account-scoped or org-scoped is irrelevant - internal = not supported.
• D is wrong because it correctly identifies external stages but incorrectly restricts them to the same region/cloud provider. Snowflake external tables have no such geographic or provider constraint.

Memory tip: Think of the naming as a literal rule - external tables need external stages. Then remember "external" means "out in the wild" - any cloud, any region, no walls.

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