What does the RECORD_METADATA column contain in a Snowflake table loaded by the Kafka connector?

• A. The Kafka message content
• B. Metadata about the message, such as the topic it was read from
• C. The timestamp of the message
• D. The key value of the message

Answer: (B)

The key idea here is that the Kafka connector separates the payload from its origin details. In Snowflake, the data from Kafka is ingested into a table with the actual message content stored in the data columns, while the RECORD_METADATA column captures information about the Kafka record itself. This metadata helps you trace where a row came from—most notably the topic—and often includes other details like partition, offset, and timestamp. It’s what you’d use for provenance and debugging when pulling from multiple topics or partitions. The message content isn’t stored in this field, and while the timestamp is part of the metadata, RECORD_METADATA isn’t limited to just the timestamp, and the key value is typically stored separately.