Which Snowflake view is used to support compliance auditing?

The ACCESSHISTORY view in the ACCOUNTUSAGE schema is specifically designed for compliance auditing. It logs every instance of data being read through a query and every data modification operation (e.g., INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE). This view provides a detailed record of which user accessed which specific tables and columns, and when the access occurred. This level of granularity is essential for auditors to track access to sensitive data, verify that data handling policies are being followed, and meet regulatory requirements.

B. COPYHISTORY: This view tracks the history of data loaded into tables using the COPY INTO command, not user access to the data for querying or analysis.
C. QUERYHISTORY: While this view logs all executed queries, it is less direct for auditing data access. ACCESSHISTORY is derived from QUERYHISTORY but is purpose-built to simplify tracking which data objects were accessed.
D. ROW ACCESS POLICIES: This is a security feature (a schema-level object) used to control which rows are visible in a query result, not a view for auditing historical access events.

1. Snowflake Documentation: ACCESSHISTORY View.

Section: ACCESSHISTORY View

Content: "This Account Usage view can be used to query what data was accessed

when it was accessed

and how. The common use cases for this view include: ... Regulatory and compliance auditing: Determine which users have been accessing sensitive data." This directly confirms the view's primary purpose for compliance auditing.

2. Snowflake Documentation: Introduction to Access Control.

Section: Auditing User Activity and Login

Content: "Snowflake provides a rich set of views in the ACCOUNTUSAGE schema to help with auditing. ... For example

the ACCESSHISTORY view provides a history of which data was read." This positions ACCESSHISTORY as a key auditing tool.

3. Snowflake Documentation: QUERYHISTORY View.

Section: QUERYHISTORY View

Content: "The ACCESSHISTORY view provides a better user experience for data auditing use cases than the QUERYHISTORY view." This explicitly states that ACCESSHISTORY is the superior and more appropriate tool for this specific task.