Which privileges are required to manage external tables?

• A. USAGE on DATABASE; USAGE on SCHEMA
• B. CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE; DB USAGE; Stage USAGE
• C. ALL PRIVILEGES
• D. DB USAGE; Schema USAGE, CREATE STAGE, CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE; Stage USAGE

Answer: (D)

Managing external tables requires permissions that cover both the metadata objects in Snowflake and the external data source they reference. You need database usage and schema usage to reference and work within the correct location. You need the privilege to create the external table on the schema to define the external table itself. You also need to be able to create a stage to point to the external data location, and you must have stage usage to access that stage when querying or loading data. Without any of these, you can’t fully manage external tables: lacking database/schema usage blocks access to objects, lacking the external table creation right prevents defining the table, lacking stage creation blocks setting up the data path, and lacking stage usage blocks reading data from the stage.