The correct answer is C. To record changes made to table data and metadata, so that the changed data can be processed .
A Snowflake stream is a change tracking object. It records data manipulation language, or DML, changes made to a source table, including inserts, updates, and deletes. Streams are commonly used with tasks to build incremental data pipelines.
Why C is correct:
Streams allow users to identify what changed in a table since the stream was last consumed. This makes it possible to process only changed rows rather than reprocessing the entire table.
A stream exposes metadata columns such as:
METADATA$ACTION
METADATA$ISUPDATE
METADATA$ROW_ID
These metadata columns help identify the type of change and the affected row.
Why the other options are incorrect:
A). This describes real-time ingestion, which is closer to Snowpipe, connectors, or streaming ingestion rather than streams.
B). Snowflake streams are not media streaming services.
D). This describes a general streaming data processing system, but a Snowflake stream itself does not process data. It records changes so other SQL processes can consume them.
Official Snowflake documentation reference:
Snowflake documentation describes streams as objects that record DML changes made to tables, including metadata about each change, so the changes can be consumed in downstream processing.
Reference: Snowflake Documentation - Streams; Snowflake Documentation - Stream metadata columns; SnowPro Core Study Guide - SQL and Snowflake Objects.
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