Snowflake has three types of caches.
Metadata cache:
This cache contains information and statistics about various objects such as tables, views, and hosted files. The cache is always up to date and never empty. It resides in Snowflake's service layer.
Query result cache:
This cache stores the results of all queries executed in the last 24 hours. These results are available in all virtual warehouses unless the underlying data has changed or the query contains functions that must be evaluated at runtime. It also exists in Snowflake's service layer.
Local cache or warehouse cache:
This cache stores data used in SQL queries on Snowflake's compute tier. It is associated with a specific instance of a virtual warehouse and is deleted when the warehouse is paused. It can speed up queries that repeatedly access the same data.
