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Note: dbt-fusion support in Elementary is still in beta, as is dbt-fusion itself. Please see below a list of features that are not yet implemented.
Elementary’s dbt package integrates with dbt-fusion, starting with version 0.20. Fusion is a complete rewrite of the dbt engine, and provides many benefits, including enhanced performance and static analysis. For more details about dbt-fusion capabilities please consult the dbt-fusion docs.

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Upgrading to dbt-fusion

As a part of the migration to dbt-fusion, it is required to remove deprecated syntax from various areas of the dbt project, and YAMLs in particular. Specifically for tests the following are important:
  1. Test arguments must be encapsulated under an arguments field.
  2. Configuration fields such as meta, tags or severity must be encapsulated under a config field.
  3. Recommended (but not a must) - change the tests field to data_tests to conform with the current dbt guidelines.
Here’s an example of an Elementary anomaly test with the old and new syntax: 
models:
  - name: login_events
    config:
      elementary:
        timestamp_column: "loaded_at"
    tests:
      - elementary.volume_anomalies:
          where_expression: "event_type in ('event_1', 'event_2') and country_name != 'unwanted country'"
          time_bucket:
            period: day
            count: 1
          tags: ["elementary"]
          severity: warn
          meta:
            owner: "@jessica.jones"

  - name: users
    tests:
      - elementary.volume_anomalies:
          tags: ["elementary"]
To facilitate the process of making these changes within your project, dbt introduced a tool called dbt-autofix that can be used to automatically migrate your project to the new syntax. Before running this tool, please upgrade to the most recent dbt-core version - as some of the syntax changes are not supported on older versions. For full information on upgrading from dbt-core to dbt-fusion, please check dbt-fusion’s official upgrade guide.)

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Supported Elementary capabilities

Most of the main capabilities of the Elementary dbt package are supported in Fusion, including:
  1. Anomaly detection tests.
  2. Schema tests.
  3. Artifacts collection.
However, the following capabilities are not supported right now for dbt Fusion:
  1. Python tests.
  2. JSON schema tests.
  3. The missing dbt-fusion features listed below.

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Missing features in dbt-fusion

In addition to the above, there are some features that are currently missing from dbt-fusion, and therefore are not yet available in the Elementary package. For each one of the issues below, we’ve included a link to the dbt-fusion github repository - please upvote these features if they are important to you!
  1. Tests with error status are not being reported - If a test fails “normally” (e.g. not_null fails on rows with null values), Elementary will report it as expected with a “fail” status. However, if there is a compilation error / any error that comes before the actual test query (“error” status in dbt-core), it will currently be missing.
  2. Source freshness results are not reported
  3. Exposure artiracts are not reported
  4. Group artifacts are not reported
  5. Compiled code is missing from dbt artifact tables
  6. Failed row count is missing from dbt artifact tables
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