BigData / Apache Hudi Interview Questions
What is the difference between snapshot and incremental queries?
A snapshot query answers "what does the table look like right now (or as of a given commit)?" — it reads the full, latest merged state.
| Snapshot query | Incremental query |
| Returns the full current (or point-in-time) table state. | Returns only records changed between two specified commits. |
| Used for typical BI/analytics queries. | Used to power incremental ETL and CDC-style downstream pipelines. |
| Cost scales with table size. | Cost scales with the amount of change, not table size. |
Incremental queries are what let a downstream job process "just the last hour's changes" cheaply, instead of re-scanning the entire table every run.
A snapshot query's cost scales with:
An incremental query's cost scales with:
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