elementary.schema_changes_from_baseline

Checks for schema changes against baseline columns defined in a source’s or model’s configuration. For this test to work, the configuration should contain columns and data types.

The initial configuration needed for this test can be auto-generated (see details below).

Supported parameters for the test:

  • fail_on_added - If set, the test will fail if there are columns in the table that do not exist in the baseline (default: False - meaning added columns won’t cause the test to fail).
  • enforce_types - If set, the test will raise an error if there are columns that are defined without a data type (default: False - in this case the test will not fail, but instead will only verify that the column exists and not its type)

Supported in Databricks with Unity Catalog only.
Not supported in Athena or Trino.

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Auto-generate baseline schema

To make it easier to configure schema tests, Elementary provides dbt operations to auto generate tests configuration based on the existing schemas.

In order for the schema changes from baseline test to work, a baseline needs to be generated from an initial state of the table and it should be added to the configuration of the source / model under “columns”. The baseline consists of the name and data type for each column.

In order to generate the baseline, Elementary provides the generate_schema_baseline_test macro. By default, running it will generate a schema_changes_from_baseline test for all sources, but it can be customized with the following arguments:

  • name - run on a specific source / model
  • include_models - whether or not to generate tests for models (default - false)
  • include_sources - whether or not to generate tests for sources (default - true)
  • fail_on_added - if set, the “fail_on_added” parameter will be added to the configuration of the tests with the supplied setting
  • enforce_types - if set, the “enforce_types” parameter will be added to the configuration of the tests with the supplied setting

Examples:

# Generate a schema changes from baseline test for all sources
dbt run-operation elementary.generate_schema_baseline_test

# Generate a schema changes from baseline test for a specific model / source named "orders"
dbt run-operation elementary.generate_schema_baseline_test --args '{"name": "orders"}'

# Generate a schema changes from baseline test for all sources and all models
dbt run-operation elementary.generate_schema_baseline_test --args '{"include_models": true}'

# Generate a schema changes from baseline test with the "fail_on_added" and "enforce_types" parameters set to true
dbt run-operation elementary.generate_schema_baseline_test --args '{"fail_on_added": true, "enforce_types": true}'

# Output:
#> Generating schema changes from baseline test for ...:
#>
#> sources:
#>   - name: <name>
#>     columns:
#>       ...
#>     tests:
#>       - elementary.schema_changes_from_baseline:
#>           ...

This command will output the generated configuration for the schema changes from baseline test, which can be copied and pasted into the relevant yml file.

Schema changesJSON schema