Snowflake Certification Practice Test

Should developers skip the creation of primary and foreign keys in Snowflake?

1. Yes, they are unnecessary

2. No, they help team members understand schema design

3. Only primary keys are important

4. No, foreign keys should be avoided

The correct answer is: No, they help team members understand schema design

Creating primary and foreign keys in Snowflake serves a critical purpose in schema design, particularly in enhancing the understandability and maintainability of the database. While Snowflake does not enforce the use of primary and foreign keys at the database level, including them in your schema can provide significant benefits for developers and stakeholders involved in the data platform. Primary keys uniquely identify a record within a table, which helps in understanding the data's integrity and relationships. Foreign keys, on the other hand, establish a clear relationship between tables, denoting how the data in one table relates to the data in another. This clarity is essential for anyone working with the database, as it signifies how different pieces of data are interconnected. Moreover, having defined primary and foreign keys promotes better data governance and can assist in data modeling efforts. Team members can easily navigate the schema and comprehend data lineage and dependencies, which is especially useful during development and when onboarding new team members or when revisiting the project after a time. In summary, while the enforcement of keys is not a requirement in Snowflake, their inclusion serves as valuable documentation and guidance for team members regarding schema relationships and overall data architecture.