Defining column_name in YAML for generic data tests is only for advanced use cases

[dbeatty10]

Contributions

• I have read the contribution docs, and understand what's expected of me.

Link to the page on docs.getdbt.com requiring updates

https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/resource-properties/data-tests#test-an-expression

What part(s) of the page would you like to see updated?

It looks to me like the code example here dbt-labs/dbt-core#10966 (comment) lead to some confusion.

I don't know off the top of my head how we could/should refactor it, but we should give it a look if we can.

Currently, this code example seems to be trying to cover two things at the same time:

• Using a SQL expression within a data test
• Apply the data test to a model instead of a column

So maybe things will be less confusing if those two things are split into their own separate code examples?

It might be helpful to use a different example for SQL expressions. One idea is expression_is_true from dbt-utils:

Test an expression

models:
  - name: model_name
    tests:
      - dbt_utils.expression_is_true:
          expression: "col_a + col_b = total"

Another example:

models:
  - name: model_name
    tests:
      - dbt_utils.expression_is_true:
          expression: "delivery_date >= order_date"

Something to keep in mind is that this looks like it originally pointed to this example:

models:
  - name: orders
    tests:
      - unique:
          column_name: "country_code || '-' || order_id"

Additional information

No response

[rudo-ro]

+1 for the improvement here