Question

A Snowflake administrator is reviewing which components handle various platform responsibilities. They need to identify which architectural layer is responsible for user authentication, access control (RBAC), query parsing and optimization, and transaction management. Which layer of the Snowflake architecture handles these responsibilities?

Accepted Answer

The Cloud Services layer, which coordinates activities such as authentication, access control, query optimization, and metadata management

Answer

The Database Storage layer, because it manages all metadata alongside the compressed table data

Answer

The Compute (virtual warehouse) layer, since each warehouse authenticates users and optimizes its own queries

Answer

A dedicated fourth layer that must be provisioned separately for security-focused features