Author(s): Karthikeyan Siva Baskaran

Originally published on Towards AI.

Software Engineering

Problem

By default, DBT creates a model under the schema which is the combination of target_schema and custom_schema. But, there are scenarios where you want to create the schema using custom_schema only, to handle that we need to overwrite the default macro that creates the schema. By default, dbt uses generate_schema_name a macro to generate the schema.

Target Schema: Defined under Profiles.yml. The target schema represents the default schema that dbt will build objects into if the custom schema is not defined for the models.

Custom Schema: Defined under dbt_project.yml. You can use custom schemas in dbt to build models in a schema other than your target schema.

Default generate_schema_name Macro

Solution

Custom generate_schema_name Macro

Create a file called override_default_macros.sql under the macros folder and input the below SQL.

If the custom_schema is not available for the specified model, then default_schema from profiles.yml will be taken.

The above same code is also maintained under this ever-growing git repository.

I hope this article helped you to customise the schema name. If you like this blog, please share it with your teammates, friends, and clap U+1F44F in the range of 1 to 50 in Medium. You can clap up to 50 times per post.

Happy Overriding!

This article is part of the DBT Tips and Tricks Series.

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Published via Towards AI