dbt-mysql

dbt-mysql

This plugin ports dbt functionality to MySQL and MariaDB.

This is an experimental plugin:

• We have not tested it extensively
• Storage engines other than the default of InnoDB are untested
• Only tested with dbt-tests-adapter with the following:
  • MySQL 5.7
  • MySQL 8.0
  • MariaDB 10.5
• Compatiblity with other dbt packages (like dbt_utils) is also untested
• Supported Python Versions are: 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 & 3.9

Please read these docs carefully and use at your own risk. Issues and PRs welcome!

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Supported features
  • MySQL 5.7 configuration gotchas
• Configuring your profile
• Notes
• Running Tests
• Reporting bugs and contributing code

Installation

This plugin can be installed via pip:

$ python -m pip install dbt-mysql

Supported features

MariaDB 10.5	MySQL 5.7	MySQL 8.0	Feature
✅	✅	✅	Table materialization
✅	✅	✅	View materialization
✅	✅	✅	Incremental materialization
✅	❌	✅	Ephemeral materialization
✅	✅	✅	Seeds
✅	✅	✅	Sources
✅	✅	✅	Custom data tests
✅	✅	✅	Docs generate
🤷	🤷	✅	Snapshots

Notes:

• Ephemeral materializations rely upon Common Table Expressions (CTEs), which are not supported until MySQL 8.0
• MySQL 5.7 has some configuration gotchas that affect snapshots (see below).

MySQL 5.7 configuration gotchas

dbt snapshots might not work properly due to automatic initialization and updating for TIMESTAMP if:

• the output of SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'sql_mode' includes NO_ZERO_DATE

A solution is to include the following in a *.cnf file:

[mysqld]
explicit_defaults_for_timestamp = true
sql_mode = "ALLOW_INVALID_DATES,{other_sql_modes}"

where {other_sql_modes} is the rest of the modes from the SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'sql_mode' output.

Configuring your profile

A dbt profile can be configured to run against MySQL using configuration example below.

Use type: mysql for MySQL 8.x, type: mysql5 for MySQL 5.x, and type: mariadb for MariaDB.

Example entry for profiles.yml:

your_profile_name:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: mysql
      server: localhost
      port: 3306
      schema: analytics
      username: your_mysql_username
      password: your_mysql_password
      ssl_disabled: True
      charset: utf8mb4
      collation: utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci

Option	Description	Required?	Example
type	The specific adapter to use	Required	mysql, mysql5 or mariadb
server	The server (hostname) to connect to	Required	yourorg.mysqlhost.com
port	The port to use	Optional	3306
schema	Specify the schema (database) to build models into	Required	analytics
username	The username to use to connect to the server	Required	dbt_admin
password	The password to use for authenticating to the server	Required	correct-horse-battery-staple
ssl_disabled	Set to enable or disable TLS connectivity to mysql5.x	Optional	True or False
charset	Specify charset to be used by a connection	Optional	utf8mb4
collation	Set to enable or disable TLS connectivity to mysql5.x	Optional	utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci

Notes

Conflicting terminology is used between:

• dbt
• Database management systems (DBMS) like MySQL, Postgres, and Snowflake
• metadata in the ANSI-standard information_schema

The conflicts include both:

• the same word meaning different things
• different words meaning the same thing

For example, a "database" in MySQL is not the same as a "database" in dbt, but it is equivalent to a "schema" in Postgres 🤯.

dbt-mysql uses the dbt terms. The native MySQL verbiage is restricted to SQL statements.

This cross-walk aligns the terminology:

information_schema	dbt (and Postgres)	MySQL
catalog	database	undefined / not implemented
schema	schema	database
relation (table/view)	relation (table/view)	relation (table/view)
column	column	column

Additionally, many DBMS have relation names with three parts whereas MySQL has only two. E.g., a fully-qualified table name in Postgres is database.schema.table versus database.table in MySQL. The missing part in MySQL is the information_schema "catalog".

DBMS	Fully-qualified relation name	Parts
Postgres	database.schema.table	3
MySQL	database.table	2

Running Tests

See tests/README.md for details on running the integration tests.

Reporting bugs and contributing code

• Want to report a bug or request a feature? See the contributing guidelines, or open an issue.

Credits

dbt-mysql borrows from dbt-spark and dbt-sqlite since Spark and SQLite also use two-part relation names.