Snowflake supports using standard SQL to query data files located in an internal (i.e. Snowflake) stage or named external (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure) stage. This can be useful for inspecting/viewing the contents of the staged files, particularly before loading or after unloading data.

False: You cannot directly query the files in an External Stage without having to load the data into a table in Snowflake. Here's why: External stages act as pointers to data residing in external cloud storage locations like S3 or Azure Blob Storage. Snowflake doesn't have direct access to the data format or schema within those files. To query the data, you need to first load it into a Snowflake table using the COPY INTO command. This process reads the data from the external stage, parses it based on the specified format definition, and populates the target table within Snowflake. Once the data is loaded into a Snowflake table, you can then use standard SQL queries to access and analyze it. In essence, external stages serve as a staging area for data before it's brought into Snowflake for processing and querying.

A is correct

True: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/querying-stage

Correct

A is correct

A is correct

Correct answer External tables are read-only, therefore no DML operations can be performed on them; however, external tables can be used for query and join operations. Views can be created against external tables.