Answer: A reader account

The question asks for the recommended Snowflake data sharing mechanism for sharing sales data with multiple external marketing agency partners. Based on the community discussion and Snowflake best practices, a reader account (Option C) is the optimal choice. Reader accounts allow the company to provision and manage Snowflake accounts for external partners who may not have existing Snowflake accounts, simplifying onboarding. They provide read-only access to shared data, centralize billing and governance under the company's control, and only incur compute costs when partners query the data. Option A (shared Amazon S3 bucket) is not a Snowflake-native sharing mechanism and lacks the security and governance features. Option B (direct share) requires each partner to have their own Snowflake account in the same region, which may not be feasible for external agencies. Option D (Data Exchange) is for curated data marketplace scenarios, not direct partner sharing.

Author: LeetQuiz Editorial Team