The correct answer is A. Use a public listing .
A public listing on Snowflake Marketplace allows a provider to make a data product discoverable and available to Snowflake consumers. If the goal is to make a dataset available broadly to Snowflake accounts in the same supported region, a public listing is the recommended sharing method.
Why A is correct:
Public listings are designed for broad distribution of datasets, applications, or services to Snowflake consumers. They are more scalable and discoverable than direct shares when the target audience is many or any Snowflake accounts.
Why the other options are incorrect:
B. A direct share is used to share data with specific known consumer accounts, not broadly with any account in a region.
C. A Data Exchange is a private data hub for a controlled group of members, not the best method for making data broadly available to any Snowflake account.
D. An external stage is used to reference files in cloud storage. It is not Snowflake’s recommended secure sharing mechanism for making datasets available to Snowflake accounts.
Official Snowflake documentation reference:
Snowflake documentation describes listings as the mechanism for offering data products to consumers through Snowflake Marketplace, while direct shares are for sharing with specific accounts.
[Reference: Snowflake Documentation — Listings; Snowflake Marketplace; Secure Data Sharing; SnowPro Core Study Guide — Data Protection and Governance., ========================]