Does the logic used to delete records from a Delta Lake table guarantee that they are no longer accessible?

The logic behind deleting records from a Delta Lake table does not guarantee that they are no longer accessible due to the nature of Delta Lake's time travel feature. When records are deleted, they are marked as such but are not immediately purged from the storage layer. Instead, Delta Lake maintains a version history of the data, allowing users to perform time travel queries to access previous states of the table, including records that may have been marked as deleted.

Time travel in Delta Lake enables users to query data as it existed at a specific point in time, which means that even after a delete operation, the records may still be retrieved until a VACUUM command is executed. The VACUUM command is crucial as it physically removes the old data files that are no longer needed, ensuring that deleted records are permanently removed from the system and cannot be accessed via time travel.

In summary, while the delete logic marks records for deletion, they remain potentially accessible through time travel until a VACUUM command is performed, thus providing the rationale for why the chosen answer is correct.