Answer: Materialized view

Materialized views (option A) are the only object among the choices that consume Snowflake credits for ongoing maintenance. This is because materialized views store pre-computed query results and require background compute resources to automatically refresh and maintain their data as underlying tables change. In contrast, standard views (B) are just saved queries with no stored data, external tables (C) reference data stored externally without Snowflake managing the storage, and regular tables (D) only consume credits for storage and queries but not for automatic background maintenance. The community discussion confirms this distinction, noting that only materialized views incur automatic background maintenance costs.

Author: LeetQuiz Editorial Team