Certified Data Analyst Associate Exam - Question 12

Question

After running DESCRIBE EXTENDED accounts.customers;, the following was returned:

Now, a data analyst runs the following command:

DROP accounts.customers;

Which of the following describes the result of running this command?

Examice · Accepted Answer

The accounts.customers table is an EXTERNAL (also known as unmanaged) table, which means that the metadata for the table is stored in the metastore, but the actual data files are stored externally (in this case, in dbfs:/stakeholders/customers). When an external table is dropped, only the table metadata is removed from the metastore, while the underlying data files remain unchanged in their original location. Therefore, the accounts.customers table will be removed from the metastore, but the underlying data files will remain untouched.

ADVIT · Answer

Answer E

markiz · Answer

Answer: B
The drop statement is missing "table" so it will not drop the table will still be valid

THC1138 · Answer

Since this is an external aka unmanaged table, dropping the table only deletes the metadata.  The data itself is untouched.  This is assuming that "table" is missing from "drop table" due to a transcription error.  Now, if the question is written on the test as it is here, then the answer would be B, since the DROP TABLE statement is incorrect and the table would not have been dropped.

Certified Data Analyst Associate Exam - Question 12

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