Why might a profiler show different information for a secure view compared with a standard view?

• A. Secure views do not expose the underlying tables or internal structural details for a view
• B. The user role doesn't have access to the view
• C. The underlying table is corrupted
• D. The view is cached and shows stale data

Answer: (A)

The main idea is that secure views hide the internal objects that a view relies on. When a view is marked as secure, Snowflake restricts access to the view’s underlying query and the base tables it references. A profiler will therefore show the output and metadata exposed by the view, but it won’t reveal the names of the underlying tables or the internal structural details of the view’s definition. That’s by design, to prevent leakage of sensitive data and schema information through metadata.

So, for a secure view, you’ll typically see less detail about what’s underneath the view compared with a standard view, even if the resulting data looks the same. The other options don’t capture this behavioral security difference: access permissions can affect visibility, but the core distinction here is that secure views deliberately obscure the internal objects and query structure. Corruption or caching issues would present differently and aren’t related to why a profiler shows different information.