Is Autoloader suitable to load full dumps?

[quakenbush]

Hi,

I recently completed the fundamentals & advanced data engineer exam, yet I've got a question about Autoloader. Please don't go too hard on me, since I lack practical experience at this point in time 😉

Docs say this is incremental ingestion, so it's easy to load new files that contain all-new records that go into the stream. There's also the option to allow overwriting of files. What if the files provided by a source system are

A) full dumps which contain ALL records currently present in the system (missing records were deleted) so the loader needs to check for new, changed or missing records

B) delta, only new or changed records (deletes must be flagged)

Is Autoloader/COPY INTO still a good fit? Perhaps using a MERGE logic?

Thanks

Roger