[ARA-C01] SnowPro Advanced: Architect Exam Guide
The SnowPro™ Advanced: Architect will validate advanced knowledge and skills to apply comprehensive architect solutions using Snowflake.
This certification will test the ability to:
- Design an end-to-end data flow from source to consumption using the Snowflake Data Cloud.
- Design and deploy a data architecture that meets business, security, and compliance requirements.
- Select appropriate Snowflake and third-party tools to optimize architecture performance.
- Design and deploy a shared data set using the Snowflake Marketplace and Data Exchange.
Course Number
CERT-ARC-GUIDESelf-Paced
SnowPro™ Advanced: Architect Certification Candidate
2+ years of practical experience with Snowflake as an Architect in a production environment.
In these two years, successful candidates would have achieved hands-on expertise with SQL and SQL analytics, experience building out a complex ETL/ELT pipeline, experience implementing security and compliance requirements, and working with different data modeling techniques.
Having coding experience outside of SQL and DevOps/DataOps design experience is a plus.
Target Audience:
- Solution Architects
- Database Architects
- System Architects
Exam Format
Exam Version: ARA-C01
Total Number of Questions: 65
Question Types: Multiple Select, Multiple Choice
Time Limit: 115 minutes
Languages: English
Registration Fee: $375 USD
Passing Score: 750 + Scaled Scoring from 0 - 1000
Unscored Content: Exams may include unscored items to gather statistical information. These items are not identified on the form and do not affect your score, and additional time is factored in to account for this content.
Prerequisites: SnowPro Core Certified
Delivery Options:
- Online Proctoring
- Onsite Testing Centers
Find more about registration details here.
Exam Domain Breakdown
This exam guide includes test domains, weightings, and objectives. It is not a comprehensive listing of all the content that will be presented on this examination. The table below lists the main content domains and their weighting ranges.
1.0 Domain: Account and Security
1.1 Design a Snowflake account and database strategy, based on business requirements.
- Create and configure Snowflake parameters based on a central account and any additional accounts.
- List the benefits and limitations of one Snowflake account as compared to multiple Snowflake accounts.
1.2 Design an architecture that meets data security, privacy, compliance, and governance requirements.
- Configure Role Based Access Control (RBAC) hierarchy
- System roles and associated best practices
- Data access
- Data security
- Compliance
1.3 Outline Snowflake security principles and identify use cases where they should be applied.
- Encryption
- Network security
- User, role, grants provisioning
- Authentication
2.0 Domain:Snowflake Architecture
2.1 Outline the benefits and limitations of various data models in a Snowflake environment.
- Data models
2.2 Design data sharing solutions, based on different use cases.
- Use cases
- Sharing within the same organization/same Snowflake account
- Sharing within a cloud region
- Sharing across cloud regions
- Sharing between different Snowflake accounts
- Sharing to a non-Snowflake customer
- Sharing across platforms
- Data Exchange
- Data sharing methods
2.3 Create architecture solutions that support development lifecycles as well as workload requirements.
- Data lakes and environments
- Workloads
- Development lifecycle support
2.4 Given a scenario, outline how objects exist within the Snowflake object hierarchy and how the hierarchy impacts an architecture.
- Roles
- Virtual warehouses
- Object hierarchy
- Database
2.5 Determine the appropriate data recovery solution in Snowflake and how data can be restored.
- Backup/recovery
- Disaster recovery
3.0 Domain: Data Engineering
3.1 Determine the appropriate data loading or data unloading solution to meet business needs.
- Data sources
- Ingestion of the data
- Architecture changes
- Data unloading
3.2 Outline key tools in Snowflake’s ecosystem and how they interact with Snowflake.
- Connectors
- Kafka
- Spark
- Python
- Drivers
- JDBC
- OBDC
- API endpoints
- SnowSQL
3.3 Determine the appropriate data transformation solution to meet business needs.
- Materialized views, views, and secure views
- Staging layers and tables
- Querying semi-structured data
- Data processing
- Stored procedures
- Streams and tasks
- Functions
4.0 Domain: Performance Optimization
4.1 Outline performance tools, best practices, and appropriate scenarios where they should be applied.
- Query profiling
- Virtual warehouse configuration
- Clustering
- Search optimization service
- Caching
- Query rewrite
4.2 Troubleshoot performance issues with existing architectures.
- JOIN explosions
- Warehouse selection (scaling up as compared to scaling out)
- Best practices and optimization techniques
- Duplication of data
- Monitoring and alerting
- Statistics
- Resource monitoring
- Account usage and information schema
Recommended Training
We recommend individuals have at least 2 + years of hands-on Snowflake Practitioner experience in an Architect role prior to attempting this exam. The exam will assess skills through scenario-based questions and real-world examples. As preparation for this exam, we recommend a combination of hands-on experience, instructor-led training, and the utilization of self-study assets.
Instructor-Led Course recommended for this exam:
Snowflake Advanced Training
Free Self Study recommended for this exam:
SnowPro Advanced: Architect Study Guide