recce-nightly 0.1.0.20240101

Environment diff tool for dbt

Recce

recce is an environment diff tool for DBT projects. It helps you to compare the results of two environments, such as development and production, and identify the differences.

Features

1. Support both Web UI & CLI
2. Multiple diff tools, including lineage diff, schema diff, and query diff. And more in the future.
3. Use the dbt-core adapter framework to connect to your data warehouse. No additional configuration is required.

Use cases

1. During development, we can verify new results by contrasting them with those from production prior to pushing the changes.
2. While reviewing PR, you can grasp the extent of the changes and their impact before merging.
3. For troubleshooting, you can execute ad-hoc diff queries to pinpoint the root causes.

Usage

Prerequisites

You have to have at least two environments in your dbt project. For example, one is for development and another is for production. You can prepare two targets with separate schemas in your DBT profile. Here is profiles.yml example

jaffle_shop:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: duckdb
      path: jaffle_shop.duckdb
      schema: dev
    prod:
      type: duckdb
      path: jaffle_shop.duckdb
      schema: main

Getting Started

5 minutes walkthrough by jaffle shop example

1. Installation

   pip install recce
   

2. Go to your DBT project

   cd your-dbt-project/
   

3. Prepare base artifacts: DBT generates artifacts when every invocation. You can find these files in the target/ folder.

   artifacts	DBT command
   manifest.json	dbt run, dbt build, ..
   catalog.json (optional)	dbt docs generate

   Copy the artifacts for the base environment to target-base/ folder.

4. Run the recce server.

   recce server
   

   Recce would diff environments between target/ and target-base/

Query Diff

You can run query diff in both Web UI and CLI

• Web UI: Go to Query tab

  select * from {{ ref("mymodel") }}
  

• CLI:

  recce diff --sql 'select * from {{ ref("mymodel") }}'
  

Primay key

In the query diff, primary key columns serve as the fundamental identifiers for distinguishing each record uniquely across both sides.

• Web UI: In the query result, click the key icons in the column headers to toggle if it is in the primary key list.

• CLI: Use the option --primary-keys to specify the primary keys. Use a comma to separate the columns if it is a compound key.

  recce diff --primary-keys event_id --sql 'select * from {{ ref("events") }} order by 1'
  

Q&A

Q: How recce connect to my data warehouse? Does recce support my data warehouse?

recce use the dbt adapter to connect to your warehouse. So it should work for your data warehouse.

Q: What credential does recce connect to the two environments?

Recce uses the same target in the profile to connect your warehouse. If you use the default target dev, it uses the credentials to connect to both environments. So please make sure that the credential can access both environments.