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dbt Metadata Sync

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You can enable the metadata sync in your Orchestration settings.

When configured, Datafold can automatically ingest dbt metadata from your production environment and display it in Datafold Lineage. Please note that when this feature is enabled, user editing of table metadata is disabled.

Model-level​

The following model-level information can be synced:

  • description is synchronized into the description field of the table into Lineage.
  • The owner of the table is set to the user identified by the user@company.com field. This user must exist in Datafold with that email.
  • The foo meta-information is added to the description field with the value bar.
  • The tags pii and bar are applied to the table as tags.

Here's an example configuration in YAML format:

models:
  - name: users
    description: "Description of the table"
    meta:
      owner: user@company.com
      foo: bar
    tags:
      - pii
      - abc

Column-level​

The following column-level information can be synced:

  • The column user_id has two tags applied: pk and id.
  • The metadata for user_id is ignored because it reflects the primary key tag.
  • The email column has the description applied.
  • The email column has the tag pii applied.
  • The email column has extra metadata information in the description field: type with the value email.

Here's an example configuration for columns in YAML format:

models:
  - name: users
    ...
    columns:
      - name: user_id
        tags:
          - pk
          - id
        meta:
          pk: true
      - name: email
        description: "The user's email"
        tags:
          - pii
        meta:
          type: email