In this time of zero latency between systems, snapshot does seem a bit outdated.

But you were right-on with the focus on Business requirements. In many of the large corporations I have worked with, it is not uncommon for management systems to be refreshed only once a week. These are usually centralized datawarehouses - pulling in data from diverse regions and OLTP systems. Even if they went to daily refresh, a snapshot or other type of full refresh is usually in order.

If you are a database professional,

business requirements are preeminent.