Which metadata column indicates the DML operation recorded in a Snowflake stream?

• A. METADATA$ISUPDATE
• B. METADATA$ROW_ID
• C. METADATA$ROW_NUMBER
• D. METADATA$ACTION

Answer: (D)

When you work with Snowflake streams, each changed row comes with metadata that describes what happened to it. The field that directly tells you which DML operation was performed is METADATA$ACTION. It indicates the type of change on the source data, typically values like INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE. This makes it the clear choice for determining how to apply or interpret each change.

The other metadata columns serve different purposes: METADATA$ROW_ID is a unique identifier for the change, METADATA$ROW_NUMBER provides a sequence position, and METADATA$ISUPDATE (if present) signals whether the row represents an update scenario, but none of these specify the actual DML operation.