Answer: Improper virtual warehouse sizing

Excessive spillage in Snowflake's Query Profile occurs when intermediate data cannot fit in memory and spills from RAM to SSD or remote storage. This is a clear indicator of insufficient memory allocation, which directly relates to improper virtual warehouse sizing. The community discussion strongly supports this with 83% selecting option C, and detailed explanations from users like Billhardy confirm that spillage happens when a warehouse's RAM is exhausted during operations like sorts, joins, or aggregations. Options A (Poor query optimization), B (Expired temporary tables), and D (Improper CTEs) are incorrect because spillage is specifically a memory/resource issue, not related to query logic, table expiration, or CTE usage. Snowflake documentation recommends increasing warehouse size to address spillage, making C the optimal answer.

Author: LeetQuiz Editorial Team