Answer: Create materialized views on the tables

The correct answer is B (Create materialized views on the tables) because materialized views precompute query results and store them in Snowflake, avoiding repeated scans of external files and significantly improving query performance for repeated queries. This is supported by Snowflake documentation and the community discussion, where B received 100% consensus with upvoted comments explaining that materialized views over external tables provide faster repeated queries by reading from stored data rather than re-scanning external files. Option A (Cluster the tables) is not applicable since external tables cannot be clustered in Snowflake. Option C (Use the metadata cache) is less effective as it only caches metadata, not query results. Option D (Enable the search optimization service) is designed for point lookups, not general query performance optimization on external tables.

Author: LeetQuiz Editorial Team