constraints

Constraints are a feature of many data platforms. When specified, the platform will perform additional validation on data as it is being populated in a new table or inserted into a preexisting table. If the validation fails, the table creation or update fails, the operation is rolled back, and you will see a clear error message.

When enforced, a constraint guarantees that you will never see invalid data in the table materialized by your model. Enforcement varies significantly by data platform.

Constraints require the declaration and enforcement of a model contract.

Constraints are never applied on ephemeral models or those materialized as view. Only table and incremental models support applying and enforcing constraints.

Defining constraints

Constraints may be defined for a single column, or at the model level for one or more columns. As a general rule, we recommend defining single-column constraints directly on those columns.

If you are defining multiple primary_key constraints for a single model, those must be defined at the model level. Defining multiple primary_key constraints at the column level is not supported.

The structure of a constraint is:

• type (required): one of not_null, unique, primary_key, foreign_key, check, custom
• expression: Free text input to qualify the constraint. Required for certain constraint types, and optional for others.
• name (optional): Human-friendly name for this constraint. Supported by some data platforms.
• columns (model-level only): List of column names to apply the constraint over.

Foreign key constraints accept two additional inputs:

• to: A relation input, likely ref(), indicating the referenced table.
• to_columns: A list of column(s) in that table containing the corresponding primary or unique key.

This syntax for defining foreign keys uses ref, meaning it will capture dependencies and works across different environments. It is available in dbt Cloud Versionless, and versions of dbt Core starting with v1.9.

Platform-specific support

In transactional databases, it is possible to define "constraints" on the allowed values of certain columns, stricter than just the data type of those values. For example, Postgres supports and enforces all the constraints in the ANSI SQL standard (not null, unique, primary key, foreign key), plus a flexible row-level check constraint that evaluates to a boolean expression.

Most analytical data platforms support and enforce a not null constraint, but they either do not support or do not enforce the rest. It is sometimes still desirable to add an "informational" constraint, knowing it is not enforced, for the purpose of integrating with legacy data catalog or entity-relation diagram tools (dbt-core#3295). Some data platforms can optionally use primary or foreign key constraints for query optimization if you specify an additional keyword.

To that end, there are two optional fields you can specify on any filter:

• warn_unenforced: False to skip warning on constraints that are supported, but not enforced, by this data platform. The constraint will be included in templated DDL.
• warn_unsupported: False to skip warning on constraints that aren't supported by this data platform, and therefore won't be included in templated DDL.

Postgres

• PostgreSQL constraints documentation: here

models/constraints_example.sql

{{
  config(
    materialized = "table"
  )
}}

select 
  1 as id, 
  'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
  cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date

models/schema.yml

models:
  - name: dim_customers
    config:
      contract:
        enforced: true
    columns:
      - name: id
        data_type: int
        constraints:
          - type: not_null
          - type: primary_key
          - type: check
            expression: "id > 0"
      - name: customer_name
        data_type: text
      - name: first_transaction_date
        data_type: date

Expected DDL to enforce constraints:

target/run/.../constraints_example.sql

create table "database_name"."schema_name"."constraints_example__dbt_tmp"
( 
    id integer not null primary key check (id > 0),
    customer_name text,
    first_transaction_date date    
)
;
insert into "database_name"."schema_name"."constraints_example__dbt_tmp" 
(   
    id,
    customer_name,  
    first_transaction_date
) 
(
select 
    1 as id, 
    'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
    cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date
);

Redshift

Redshift currently only enforces not null constraints; all other constraints are metadata only. Additionally, Redshift does not allow column checks at the time of table creation. See more in the Redshift documentation here.

models/constraints_example.sql

{{
  config(
    materialized = "table"
  )
}}

select 
  1 as id, 
  'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
  cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date

models/schema.yml

models:
  - name: dim_customers
    config:
      contract:
        enforced: true
    columns:
      - name: id
        data_type: integer
        constraints:
          - type: not_null
          - type: primary_key # not enforced  -- will warn & include
          - type: check       # not supported -- will warn & skip
            expression: "id > 0"
        tests:
          - unique            # primary_key constraint is not enforced
      - name: customer_name
        data_type: varchar
      - name: first_transaction_date
        data_type: date

Note that Redshift limits the maximum length of the varchar values to 256 characters by default (or when specified without a length). This means that any string data exceeding 256 characters might get truncated or return a "value too long for character type" error. To allow the maximum length, use varchar(max). For example, data_type: varchar(max).

Expected DDL to enforce constraints:

target/run/.../constraints_example.sql

create table "database_name"."schema_name"."constraints_example__dbt_tmp"
    
(
    id integer not null,
    customer_name varchar,
    first_transaction_date date,
    primary key(id)
)    
;

insert into "database_name"."schema_name"."constraints_example__dbt_tmp"
(   
select
    1 as id,
    'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name,
    cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date
); 

Snowflake

• Snowflake constraints documentation: here
• Snowflake data types: here

Snowflake suppports four types of constraints: unique, not null, primary key, and foreign key.

It is important to note that only the not null (and the not null property of primary key) are actually checked at present. The rest of the constraints are purely metadata, not verified when inserting data. Although Snowflake does not validate unique, primary, or foreign_key constraints, you may optionally instruct Snowflake to use them for query optimization by specifying rely in the constraint expression field.

Currently, Snowflake doesn't support the check syntax and dbt will skip the check config and raise a warning message if it is set on some models in the dbt project.

models/constraints_example.sql

{{
  config(
    materialized = "table"
  )
}}

select 
  1 as id, 
  'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
  cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date

models/schema.yml

models:
  - name: dim_customers
    config:
      contract:
        enforced: true
    columns:
      - name: id
        data_type: integer
        description: hello
        constraints:
          - type: not_null
          - type: primary_key # not enforced  -- will warn & include
          - type: check       # not supported -- will warn & skip
            expression: "id > 0"
        tests:
          - unique            # need this test because primary_key constraint is not enforced
      - name: customer_name
        data_type: text
      - name: first_transaction_date
        data_type: date

Expected DDL to enforce constraints:

target/run/.../constraints_example.sql

create or replace transient table <database>.<schema>.constraints_model        
(
    id integer not null primary key,
    customer_name text,
    first_transaction_date date  
)
as
(
select 
  1 as id, 
  'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
  cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date
);

BigQuery

BigQuery allows defining and enforcing not null constraints, and defining (but not enforcing) primary key and foreign key constraints (which can be used for query optimization). BigQuery does not support defining or enforcing other constraints. For more information, refer to Platform constraint support

Documentation: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/standard-sql/data-definition-language

Data types: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/standard-sql/data-types

models/constraints_example.sql

{{
  config(
    materialized = "table"
  )
}}

select 
  1 as id, 
  'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
  cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date

models/schema.yml

models:
  - name: dim_customers
    config:
      contract:
        enforced: true
    columns:
      - name: id
        data_type: int
        constraints:
          - type: not_null
          - type: primary_key # not enforced  -- will warn & include
          - type: check       # not supported -- will warn & skip
            expression: "id > 0"
        tests:
          - unique            # primary_key constraint is not enforced
      - name: customer_name
        data_type: string
      - name: first_transaction_date
        data_type: date

Column-level constraint on nested column:

models/nested_column_constraints_example.sql

{{
  config(
    materialized = "table"
  )
}}

select
  'string' as a,
  struct(
    1 as id,
    'name' as name,
    struct(2 as id, struct('test' as again, '2' as even_more) as another) as double_nested
  ) as b

models/nested_fields.yml

version: 2

models:
  - name: nested_column_constraints_example
    config:
      contract: 
        enforced: true
    columns:
      - name: a
        data_type: string
      - name: b.id
        data_type: integer
        constraints:
          - type: not_null
      - name: b.name
        description: test description
        data_type: string
      - name: b.double_nested.id
        data_type: integer
      - name: b.double_nested.another.again
        data_type: string
      - name: b.double_nested.another.even_more
        data_type: integer
        constraints: 
          - type: not_null

Expected DDL to enforce constraints:

target/run/.../constraints_example.sql

create or replace table `<project>`.`<dataset>`.`constraints_model`        
(
    id integer not null,
    customer_name string,
    first_transaction_date date  
)
as
(
select 
  1 as id, 
  'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
  cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date
);

Databricks

Databricks allows you to define:

• a not null constraint
• and/or additional check constraints, with conditional expressions including one or more columns

As Databricks does not support transactions nor allows using create or replace table with a column schema, the table is first created without a schema, and alter statements are then executed to add the different constraints.

This means that:

• The names and order of columns is checked but not their type
• If the constraints and/or constraint_check fails, the table with the failing data will still exist in the Warehouse

See this page with more details about the support of constraints on Databricks.

models/constraints_example.sql

{{
  config(
    materialized = "table"
  )
}}

select 
  1 as id, 
  'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name, 
  cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date

models/schema.yml

models:
  - name: dim_customers
    config:
      contract:
        enforced: true
    columns:
      - name: id
        data_type: int
        constraints:
          - type: not_null
          - type: primary_key # not enforced  -- will warn & include
          - type: check       # not supported -- will warn & skip
            expression: "id > 0"
        tests:
          - unique            # primary_key constraint is not enforced
      - name: customer_name
        data_type: text
      - name: first_transaction_date
        data_type: date

Expected DDL to enforce constraints:

target/run/.../constraints_example.sql

  create or replace table schema_name.my_model 
  using delta 
  as
    select
      1 as id,
      'My Favorite Customer' as customer_name,
      cast('2019-01-01' as date) as first_transaction_date

Followed by the statements

alter table schema_name.my_model change column id set not null;
alter table schema_name.my_model add constraint 472394792387497234 check (id > 0);