ClickHouse configurations

Models

Type	Supported?	Details
view materialization	YES	Creates a view.
table materialization	YES	Creates a table. See below for the list of supported engines.
incremental materialization	YES	Creates a table if it doesn't exist, and then writes only updates to it.
ephemeral materialized	YES	Creates a ephemeral/CTE materialization. This does model is internal to dbt and does not create any database objects

Experimental models

The following are experimental features in Clickhouse:

Type	Supported?	Details
Materialized View materialization	YES, Experimental	Creates a materialized view.
Distributed table materialization	YES, Experimental	Creates a distributed table.
Distributed incremental materialization	YES, Experimental	Incremental model based on the same idea as distributed table. Note that not all strategies are supported, visit this for more info.
Dictionary materialization	YES, Experimental	Creates a dictionary.

View materialization

A dbt model can be created as a ClickHouse view and configured using the following syntax:

Project file

dbt_project.yml

models:
  <resource-path>:
    +materialized: view

Config block

models/<model_name>.sql

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

Table materialization

A dbt model can be created as a ClickHouse table and configured using the following syntax:

Project file

dbt_project.yml

models:
  <resource-path>:
    +materialized: table
    +order_by: [ <column-name>, ... ]
    +engine: <engine-type>
    +partition_by: [ <column-name>, ... ]

Config block

models/<model_name>.sql

{{ config(
    materialized = "table",
    engine = "<engine-type>",
    order_by = [ "<column-name>", ... ],
    partition_by = [ "<column-name>", ... ],
      ...
    ]
) }}

Table configuration

Option	Description	Required?
materialized	How the model will be materialized into ClickHouse. Must be table to create a table model.	Required
engine	The table engine to use when creating tables. See list of supported engines below.	Optional (default: MergeTree())
order_by	A tuple of column names or arbitrary expressions. This allows you to create a small sparse index that helps find data faster.	Optional (default: tuple())
partition_by	A partition is a logical combination of records in a table by a specified criterion. The partition key can be any expression from the table columns.	Optional

Incremental materialization

Table model will be reconstructed for each dbt execution. This may be infeasible and extremely costly for larger result sets or complex transformations. To address this challenge and reduce the build time, a dbt model can be created as an incremental ClickHouse table and is configured using the following syntax:

Project file

dbt_project.yml

models:
  <resource-path>:
    +materialized: incremental
    +order_by: [ <column-name>, ... ]
    +engine: <engine-type>
    +partition_by: [ <column-name>, ... ]
    +unique_key: [ <column-name>, ... ]
    +inserts_only: [ True|False ]

Config block

models/<model_name>.sql

{{ config(
    materialized = "incremental",
    engine = "<engine-type>",
    order_by = [ "<column-name>", ... ],
    partition_by = [ "<column-name>", ... ],
    unique_key = [ "<column-name>", ... ],
    inserts_only = [ True|False ],
      ...
    ]
) }}

Incremental table configuration

Option	Description	Required?
materialized	How the model will be materialized into ClickHouse. Must be table to create a table model.	Required
unique_key	A tuple of column names that uniquely identify rows. For more details on uniqueness constraints, see here.	Required. If not provided altered rows will be added twice to the incremental table.
engine	The table engine to use when creating tables. See list of supported engines below.	Optional (default: MergeTree())
order_by	A tuple of column names or arbitrary expressions. This allows you to create a small sparse index that helps find data faster.	Optional (default: tuple())
partition_by	A partition is a logical combination of records in a table by a specified criterion. The partition key can be any expression from the table columns.	Optional
inserts_only	(Deprecated, see the append materialization strategy). If True, incremental updates will be inserted directly to the target incremental table without creating an intermediate table.	Optional (default: False)
incremental_strategy	The strategy to use for incremental materialization. delete+insert, append and insert_overwrite (experimental) are supported. For additional details on strategies, see here	Optional (default: 'default')
incremental_predicates	Incremental predicate clause to be applied to delete+insert materializations	Optional

Snapshot

dbt snapshots allow a record to be made of changes to a mutable model over time. This in turn allows point-in-time queries on models, where analysts can “look back in time” at the previous state of a model. This functionality is supported by the ClickHouse connector and is configured using the following syntax:

For more information on configuration, check out the snapshot configs reference page.

Supported table engines

Type	Details
MergeTree (default)	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/mergetree-family/mergetree/.
HDFS	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/integrations/hdfs
MaterializedPostgreSQL	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/integrations/materialized-postgresql
S3	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/integrations/s3
EmbeddedRocksDB	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/integrations/embedded-rocksdb
Hive	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/integrations/hive

Experimental supported table engines

Type	Details
Distributed Table	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/special/distributed.
Dictionary	https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/engines/table-engines/special/dictionary

If you encounter issues connecting to ClickHouse from dbt with one of the above engines, please report an issue here.

Cross database macro support

dbt-clickhouse supports most of the cross database macros now included in dbt-core, with the following exceptions:

• The split_part SQL function is implemented in ClickHouse using the splitByChar function. This function requires using a constant string for the "split" delimiter, so the delimeter parameter used for this macro will be interpreted as a string, not a column name
• Similarly, the replace SQL function in ClickHouse requires constant strings for the old_chars and new_chars parameters, so those parameters will be interpreted as strings rather than column names when invoking this macro.

Setting quote_columns

To prevent a warning, make sure to explicitly set a value for quote_columns in your dbt_project.yml. See the doc on quote_columns for more information.

seeds:
  +quote_columns: false  #or `true` if you have csv column headers with spaces