Which Snowflake feature facilitates access to external API services such as geocoders, data transformation, machine learning models, and other custom code?

Question

Options

• ASecurity integration
• BExternal tables
• CExternal functions
• DJava User-Defined Functions (UDFs)

• A
  3% (1)
• B
  3% (1)
• C
  95% (37)

Explanation

External Functions act as a bridge between Snowflake and external API services - they allow Snowflake SQL to invoke remote endpoints (like geocoding APIs, ML inference services, or custom transformations) via an API integration, returning results directly into your queries.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A. Security integration - Handles authentication to external services (OAuth, SAML, etc.), not the invocation of external APIs itself; it's a prerequisite, not the calling mechanism.
• B. External tables - Lets Snowflake query files in cloud storage (S3, GCS, Azure Blob) as if they were tables; it's about external data, not external code.
• D. Java UDFs - Run custom Java logic inside Snowflake's compute environment; they don't reach out to external API endpoints.

Memory tip: Think of "External Functions" as Snowflake's phone line to the outside world - functions call out to external services. External tables read in external data, and UDFs run internally. The word "functions" signals callable logic, and "external" signals it lives outside Snowflake.

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