In a VARIANT column, NULL values are stored as the string 'null' rather than the SQL NULL value.

• A. False
• B. True
• C. Not applicable
• D. Depends on the data type

Answer: (B)

VARIANT holds semi-structured data like JSON, including the JSON null value. When a JSON field is null, Snowflake represents that as a SQL NULL when you access the field, not as the literal text 'null'. The string 'null' is just a real string value if you explicitly stored those characters, and it does not represent a missing value. So NULL within a VARIANT is not stored as the string 'null'; it is represented as SQL NULL when queried.