Snowflake SnowPro Core Certification Preparation Step by Step
Trying my best to put the things in a systematic way for those who are preparing or planning for the Snowflake SnowPro Core certification and to become a data cloud certified. I liked the most, about Snowflake cloud data base for it’s simplicity, user friendly interaction, the internal architecture, the advanced sharing technologies, semi-structured data manipulation etc.
SnowPro Core certification was released in the year 2019. Duration of the exam is 120 minutes with 100 questions having multiple select, multiple choice and True/False. Fee is USD 175.00. Snowflake uses a scale of 0–1000 with a passing scaled score of 750. The certification exam delivery options are “Online Proctoring — Webassesor” or “Onsite Kryterion Testing Centers”. The questions are straightforward and the exam doesn't have any scenario-based questions, till now is mainly based on the theoretical knowledge of Snowflake. The questions are ranging from the fundamentals to the advanced concepts. I would say the best friend here is Snowflake online documentation. And we all know that the Snowflake product came recently just few years back. We don’t have much exposure on the product and the certification process. Even there aren’t many learning resources available in the market too. I hope this will give you some understanding on the product resources and how to approach the SnowPro Core certification as well.
Certification road map
Step:1 Snowflake Official Online Documentation. Link is here which is a must. This documentation provides a conceptual overviews, tutorials, and a detailed reference for all supported SQL commands, functions, and it’s operations. Also the site describes how to access the Snowflake account and to perform all the administrative and user level tasks associated with it.
Step: 2 Snowflake University Mindtickle. Link is here. This will help you to understand the basic concepts. Take the full advantage of the course in the following order as mentioned below, but requires registration only and it is free of cost. The best part it offers badges on completion of each designed modules with passing criteria.
Step: 3 SnowPro certification resources, there is a series of documents in the portal, give a good glimpse on the certification track, the question pattern, the mock tests directly from Snowflake and the general FAQs. Exam study guide helps each subject wise distribution in percentage coming in the certification. Sample questions will give you an idea about the pattern.
Step: 4 Hands-on material, make sure to use the 30-days Snowflake trial to perform all your lab exercises. Upon free trial signing up, Snowflake will give you $400 credits to use. Link is here. You can refer the how to set up your account such as demo Snowflake university videos, pdfs and quizzes for your lab work. Get your hands dirty on at least one or two projects involving the extensive Snowflake usage but if not then don’t worry. It would be nice to have the project experience but not a mandatory.
Step: 5 One more document to consider i.e. “Snowflake free trial Lab Guide” which can be found here. It’s a 58 pager pdf with lot of exercises, which are very useful when you don’t have a real-life project handy to work on.
Step: 6 Practice questions, there are few resources available in the market who are providing with similar type of exam patterns. You can utilize those tests online for your knowledge test and they are all free. I took the advantage of practicing udemy mock tests which are equally important, because you will get lot of questions which will give you a good confidence during the exam. Make sure to take notes and prepare yourself accordingly. Using online free courses and especially the practice exams, will land you a great foundation.
Step: 7 SnowPro Cheat sheets are available in the web and the same has been designed who had been already appeared the certification and cleared as well. This cheat sheet is equally important because it gives complete snapshot of the exam resources covering all the key points in a summarized fashion.
Conclusion
By reading the documentation in depth, doing hands-on, lab tutorial and utilizing some existing free resources provided by Snowflake you will have a good start to pass the exam. Thank you for reading, I hope this blog will help you in your Snowflake journey in a better way. You can reach out to me in case of more questions you have on my twitter handle or my LinkedIn or leave a comment below. Good luck!
