FAQ - Elementary

The short answer is yes. We recommend that Elementary models will have their own schema, but it is not mandatory. You can change the schema name by using dbt custom schema configuration on your dbt_project.yml. In short, the default dbt generate_schema_name macro concatenate the value provided in schema configuration key to the target schema, as in: target_schema_custom_schema.

If you want a different behaviour, like configuring a full name for the Elementary schema, you can override the default generate_schema_name macro with your logic. Before you do that, make sure that there isn’t already a macro named generate_schema_name.sql in your project.

Here is a macro you can use that would search for a config under meta named schema_name. If it exists, that would be the schema name. If not - the original dbt logic would be followed:

generate_schema_name.sql

Copied{% macro generate_schema_name(custom_schema_name, node) -%}

    {%- set default_schema = target.schema -%}
    {% set config_meta = node.config.get('meta') %}

    {% if config_meta and config_meta is mapping %}
        {% set schema_name = config_meta.get('schema_name') %}
        {% if schema_name and schema_name is string %}
            {{ return(schema_name) }}
        {% endif %}

    {%- elif custom_schema_name is none -%}

        {{ default_schema }}

    {%- else -%}

        {{ default_schema }}_{{ custom_schema_name | trim }}

    {%- endif -%}

{%- endmacro %}

If you implement this macro and want to name the Elementary schema elementary_data_observability:

dbt_project.yml

Copiedmodels:
  elementary:
    +meta:
      schema_name: "elementary_data_observability"

The schemas structure we recommend is:

Your schemas
Elementary models schema - The schema name is configured under your dbt_project.yml.
Elementary temp test results schema - The Elementary schema name with __test suffix.

We recommend configuring a dedicated schema for the Elementary models using the dbt custom schema option. Here is an example configuration, that creates a schema with the suffix ‘_elementary’ for elementary models:

dbt_project.yml

Copiedmodels:
  elementary:
    +schema: elementary

Also, Elementary creates a schema to store temp tables with results of elementary anomaly detection tests. As some users have hundreds of Elementary tests, we didn’t want tons of small tables to be created in the Elementary schema. These results are later merged to the incremental tables in the main elementary schema.

You may change the suffix of the tests schema using a var:

dbt_project.yml

Copiedvars:
  tests_schema_name: '_test_results'