dbt found two schema.yml entries for the same resource

Help
1

The problem I’m having

I have 2 yml, 1 where y have the incremental configuration for my models and other where i want to add the descriptions and docs, but it seems i cant.

The context of why I’m trying to do this

In my model i have a lot of columns i want to have some sort of description and possible add blocks in the future, and i want to separte that from the incremental configuration im trying, but i allways run in to the same problem:

“dbt found two schema.yml entries for the same resource named s_customer. Resources and their associated columns may only be described a single time.”

Some example code

models/conf.yml

  - name: s_customer
    config:
      materialized: incremental
      unique_key : [h_customer_haskey,load_record]
      incremental_strategy: merge
      merge_exclude_columns: [h_customer_haskey,custkey]
    columns:
      - name: h_customer_haskey
        tests:
          - relationships:
              field: h_customer_haskey
              to: ref('h_customer')

models/cutomer/schema.yml

models:
  - name: s_customer
    description: "description"
    columns:
      - name: h_customer_haskey
        description: "description"
      - name: has_diff
        description: "description"
      - name: load_record
        description: "description"
      - name: is_active
       description: "description"
      - name: last_modified
        description: "description"
      - name: source
        description: "description"
      - name: custkey
        description: "description"
      - name: addres
        description: "description"
      - name: comment
        description: "description"
      - name: mktsegment
        description: ""
      - name: name
        description: "descriptionr"
      - name: phone
        description: "description"
      - name: accbal
        description: ""

How could i solve my problem? I would like to avoid having all in the same file, becouse i have more models and they can have a lot of columns and is gona be horrible to look at the yml later on.

Sorry ahead of time, english aint my first lenguage.

2

Hi create the model’s with two different names and use alias.

in your case

models/s_customer_1.sql
models/conf.yml ( replace s_customer with s_customer_1)
inside s_customer_1.sql use
{{ config(materialized=‘table’,alias=‘s_customer’) }}

models/cutomer/s_customer_2.sql
models/cutomer/schema.yml ( replace s_customer with s_customer_1)

inside s_customer_2.sql use
{{ config(materialized=‘table’,alias=‘s_customer’) }}

Hope it should work for your scenerio

3

I tried and it works but is not what i was looking for, i dont want to have to create the models 2 times if possible in the project, i already have a lot and is gonna be really complicated to navigate throught the project if i do that even if i separate then in another folder. ¿Is there any other way?

4

Hi, If you are looking to define all descriptions at one place for the columns which are common in multiple tables, I have not seen any feature in dbt to help you. @joellabes - Any help you can provide on this?

5

Thanks for your time, is a pity i cant do that.

6

Hello @guserrl .
I think schema alias + below example can help you.

schema file :customer.yml

version: 2

models:

  • name: section for columns comments for customer table
    columns: &section_cols # block of columns which are defined once in schema.yml file
    • name: customer_id
      description: customer unique id
    • name: customer_name
      description: customer name
    • name: customer_age
      description: customer age
    • name: customer_post_code
      description: customer post code

models:

  • name: stg_customer # table one
    description: staging customer table
    columns: *section_cols # referring columns comment block

  • name: customer # table two
    description: primary customer table
    columns: *section_cols # referring columns comment block

stg_customer.sql # model one
{{
config(materialized=‘table’)
}}

select

1 as customer_id,
“naveed” as customer_name,
“s1 e001” as customer_post_code

customer.sql # model two
{{
config(materialized=‘table’)
}}

select

*,
23 as customer_age
from {{ref(“stg_customer”)}}

when i run the both the model’s (in big query) . i can see the descriptions are reflected for both stg_customer and customer table

image
image1812×610 54.9 KB

image
image1884×610 61.7 KB