dbt-unit-testing VS sqlfluff

If you use dbt for transformations Dbt Unit Testing (https://github.com/EqualExperts/dbt-unit-testing) is getting some attention (https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/languages-and-frameworks?blipid=202304042)

dbt-unit-testing

We use this and take an example-based tests approach for any non-trivial tables: https://github.com/EqualExperts/dbt-unit-testing

> How do you test some SQL logic in isolation?

I do this using sql

1. Extracting an 'ephemeral model' to different model file

2. Mock out this model in upstream model in unit tests https://github.com/EqualExperts/dbt-unit-testing

3. Write unit tests for this model.

This is not different than regular software development in a language like java.

I would argue its even better better because unit tests are always in tabular format and pretty easy to understand. Java unit tests on other hand are never read by devs in practice.

I haven't done it yet but there are some popular blogs as well as a DBT package someone created.

> I really don’t understand the communities obsession with unwieldy tools like DBT.

It lets me write test first sql transforms. I never thought TDD sql would be possible. My sql is so much more readable with common logic extracted into ephmeral models. I practice same method to write clear code to write sql, eg: too many mocks = refactor into separate model ( class) .

I think DBT made this possible with refs that can be swapped out with mocks. This is the awesome library I am using https://github.com/EqualExperts/dbt-unit-testing

Repo : https://github.com/sqlfluff/sqlfluff

I'm surprised sqlfluff hasn't been mentioned yet. Perhaps not a comprehensive list, but it's worked for everything I've thrown at it. There's an ANSI keyword list [0], and then dialect-specific lists for everything from DB2 [1] to Snowflake [2].

[0]: https://github.com/sqlfluff/sqlfluff/blob/main/src/sqlfluff/...

It has tons of annoying quirks, but I couldn't imagine running a DBT project without it: https://github.com/sqlfluff/sqlfluff

Move SQL queries to sql files and read from files (Use sqlfluff to lint the code https://github.com/sqlfluff/sqlfluff)

SQLFluff is a good CLI tool for this and includes support for jinja and dbt. I don't think there's a VSCode plugin for it yet.

This linter can really enforce some best practices https://github.com/sqlfluff/sqlfluff

A list of best practices:

BigQuery SQL and SQLFluff

There's a SQL parser/linter called SQLFluff that my team uses for our CI/CD. I've made a few pull requests to fix the parser for the particular SQL dialect we used, and my college compiler classes definitely helped.