The Information Schema and Account Usage Share in Snowflake provide metadata and historical usage data for various objects within a Snowflake account. Specifically, they offer storage information for Tables, Databases, and Internal Stages. These schemas contain views and table functions that allow users to query object metadata and usage metrics, such as the amount of data stored and historical activity.
* Tables: The storage information includes data on the daily average amount of data in database tables.
* Databases: For databases, the storage usage is calculated based on all the data contained within the database, including tables and stages.
* Internal Stages: Internal stages are locations within Snowflake for temporarily storing data, and their storage usage is also tracked.
References: The information is verified according to the SnowPro Core Certification Study Guide and Snowflake documentation

To minimize Continuous Data Protection (CDP) costs when dealing with large, high-churn dimension tables in Snowflake, using transient tables is a recommended approach.
Transient Tables: These are designed for data that does not require fail-safe protection. They provide the benefit of reducing costs associated with continuous data protection since they do not have the seven-day Fail- safe period that is mandatory for permanent tables.
Periodic Copying to Permanent Tables: By periodically copying data from transient tables to permanent tables, you can achieve a balance between data protection and cost-efficiency. Permanent tables offer the extended data protection features, including Time Travel and Fail-safe, butthese features can be applied selectively rather than continuously, reducing the overall CDP costs.
Snowflake Documentation on Transient Tables
Snowflake Documentation on Time Travel & Fail-safe

For minimizing the cost of large tables that are used to store transitory data, which does not need to be protected against failures because it can be reconstructed outside of Snowflake, the best table type to use is Transient. Transient tables in Snowflake are designed for temporary or transitory data storage and offer reduced storage costs compared to permanent tables. However, unlike temporary tables, they persist across sessions until explicitly dropped.
* Why Transient Tables: Transient tables provide a cost-effective solution for storing data that is temporary but needs to be available longer than a single session. They have lower data storage costs because Snowflake does not maintain historical data (Time Travel) for as long as it does for permanent
* tables.
* Creating a Transient Table:
* To create a transient table, use the TRANSIENT keyword in the CREATE TABLE statement:
CREATE TRANSIENT TABLE my_transient_table (...);
* Use Case Considerations: Transient tables are ideal for scenarios where the data is not critical, can be easily recreated, and where cost optimization is a priority. They are suitable for development, testing, or staging environments where data longevity is not a concern.
Reference: For more details on transient tables and their usage scenarios, refer to the Snowflake documentation on table types: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/sql/create-table.html#table-types