Which statement about RECORD_METADATA in Kafka-loaded Snowflake tables is true?

• A. It contains the metadata about the Kafka message
• B. It contains the message payload
• C. It contains only the timestamp
• D. It contains the topic name

Answer: (A)

RECORD_METADATA is a special column that stores per-record Kafka information. It’s a structured object (VARIANT) that includes fields like topic, partition, offset, and timestamp for each Kafka message. The actual message payload lives in a separate column (commonly VALUE or PAYLOAD), so RECORD_METADATA does not contain the payload. It’s not limited to just the timestamp or just the topic, so describing it as simply "the metadata about the Kafka message" is the most accurate.