What does HackerNews think of dbt-unit-testing?

Ask HN: How do you test SQL? | Jan 2023

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

More trivial example:

    {%
        call dbt_unit_testing.test(
            'REDACTED',
            'Should replace nullish values with NULL'
        )
    %}
        {% call dbt_unit_testing.mock_source('REDACTED', 'REDACTED', opts) %}

            "id" | "industry"
            1    | 'A'
            2    | 'B'
            3    | ''
            4    | 'Other'
            5    | 'C'
            6    | NULL

        {% endcall %}

        {% call dbt_unit_testing.expect(opts) %}

            "history_id" | "REDACTED"
            1            | 'A'
            2            | 'B'
            3            | NULL
            4            | NULL
            5            | 'C'
            6            | NULL

        {% endcall %}
    {% endcall %}

SQL should be the default choice for data engineering pipelines | Jan 2023

Expand Context ↕

> 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.

> in this day and age where enriching the data by running it through some ML model isn't that rare,

Still pretty rare, This constitutes a very minor percentage of ETL in an typical enterprise.

Modern data modeling: Start with the end? | Dec 2022

> 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