Hello DBT, can you kindly advise if there is a way to define “column type” (eg: varchar, date) in dbt?

Because dbt uses “Create Table As Select” statements (CTAS) to create tables in relevant database platforms, instead of doing separate “CREATE TABLE” and then “INSERT” statements, it doesn’t natively have a way to specify datatypes. However, what we do in our dbt models is to force a CAST on every …

[image] josh: – All of these 5 fields excluded from the star are already in the dimension. I’m wondering what is the best practice of where to do this casting? For example, my first step is always to create a base_ table that renames columns. Seems like that would be the right place to do th…

We do this casting on every single model. The issue of ensuring that datatypes are what we expect they are is not just an issue for models that are immediately adjacent to sources but for every single model along the way. From an engineering perspective we never want to assume - we always want to ve…

We’ve also had a need to cast data types. We unpacked a JSON string. This is what we did: [image] Auto pivot JSON string using schema.yml in BigQuery Show and Tell Let me start by giving you some background and apologies if the background is longer than the so…

Can you define column data types in dbt?

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Can you define column data types in dbt?

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