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Driver Interface Changelog

Metabase 0.52.0

  • The Docker image for Metabase 0.52.0 now uses Java 21 instead of Java 11. Please make sure to test your driver against Java 21 and make sure it works as expected.

    We have found several of our own drivers that run into issues with the security changes introduced in newer JVMs; as such, we’re currently setting the JVM flag

    --add-opens java.base/java.nio=ALL-UNNAMED

    when running Metabase to disable some of these new security checks. If your tests run into issues with Java 21 without the flag set, try running with it set – this might fix the problems.

Metabase 0.51.4

  • Another driver feature has been added: describe-indexes. If a driver opts-in to supporting this feature, The multimethod metabase.driver/describe-indexes must be implemented, as a replacement for metabase.driver/describe-table-indexes.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.describe-table/describe-indexes-sql has been added. The method needs to be implemented if the driver supports describe-indexes and you want to use the default JDBC implementation of metabase.driver/describe-indexes.

Metabase 0.51.0

  • New optional method metabase.driver/query-result-metadata has been added for efficiently calculating metadata for queries without actually running them. :sql-jdbc has been given a default implementation; drivers not based on this that can determine result metadata without actually running queries should add their implementations as well for better performance when saving Questions. Refer to the method docstring for more information and where to find an example implementation.

  • Prior to 0.51.0, to generate SQL queries with inline parameters, Metabase would generate a parameterized SQL string, then attempt to parse the SQL replace and replace ? placeholders with inline values from the driver method metabase.driver.sql.util.unprepare/unprepare-value. In 0.51.0+, Metabase instead generates these queries using Honey SQL 2’s :inline option, eliminating the need to parse and replace ? placeholders. As such, the metabase.driver.sql.util.unprepare namespace has been deprecated; you should remove all usages of it in your driver.

  • The metabase.driver.sql.util.unprepare/unprepare-value method has been replaced by the new method metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/inline-value. The signatures of these two functions are the same, and you should be able to simply change the all of your unprepare-value implementations to inline-value instead. See PR #45008 for examples of this change.

    For the time being, implementations of unprepare-value are used as implementations of inline-value automatically, but unprepare-value is slated for removal in 0.54.0.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/format-honeysql is now a multimethod, mainly so you can bind *compile-with-inline-parameters* if you need to always compile without parameterization.

  • The dynamic variable metabase.driver/*compile-with-inline-parameters* (default false) has been added; drivers that can generate parameterized queries should look at its value in their implementation of metabase.driver/mbql->native and adjust their output accordingly. For :sql-jdbc-based drivers that support parameterization, this is handled in the shared metabase.driver.sql.query-processor code, so you shouldn’t need to adjust anything here. For :sql drivers that do not support JDBC-style parameterized queries you can implement format-honeysql and bind *compile-with-inline-parameters* as discussed above. See the :athena driver for an example of how to do this.

  • metabase.driver.sql.util.unprepare/unprepare, which took a parameterized SQL string and de-parameterized or “unprepared” it, has been removed. Instead, if you need a query with parameters spliced directly into the SQL, bind metabase.driver/*compile-with-inline-parameters* as discussed above.

  • Similarly, the driver method metabase.driver/splice-parameters-into-native-query has been marked deprecated, and the default implementation will throw an Exception if called. Rework code that generates parameterized queries and then calls unprepare or splice-parameters-into-native-query with code that generates queries with inlined parameters in the first place as discussed above. Tests can use metabase.query-processor.compile/compile-with-inline-parameters if needed.

  • metabase.query-processor.compile/compile-and-splice-parameters has been removed; replace usages with metabase.query-processor.compile/compile-with-inline-parameters.

  • The three-arity of metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/format-honeysql (which had an additional parameter for Honey SQL version) has been removed; replace all usages with the two-arity version. Honey SQL 2 has been the only supported version since Metabase 0.49.0.

  • The :skip-drop-db? option sometimes passed to methods for loading and destroying test data is no longer passed, you can remove code that checks for it. Test data code is now better about avoiding unneeded/redundant calls to metabase.test.data.interface/create-db!, so test data loading code should not need to call DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS before loading test data.

  • Test data loading for JDBC-based databases has been overhauled somewhat. The multimethod metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/load-data! and helper functions for it have been removed in favor of several new simpler to compose and understand multimethods.

  • metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/row-xform is a transducer applied to each row when loading test data. The default implementation is identity, but you can use metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/add-ids-xform to add IDs to each row (this replaces the removed metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/load-data-add-ids function) and metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/maybe-add-ids-xform (which replaces metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/load-data-maybe-add-ids! and metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/load-data-maybe-add-ids-chunked!).

  • metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/chunk-size is used to control the number of rows that should be loaded in each batch. The default is 200, but you can implement this method and return nil to load data all at once regardless of the number of rows. metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/*chunk-size*, metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/load-data-chunked, metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/load-data-all-at-once!, metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/load-data-chunked!, and other similar functions are no longer needed and have been removed.

  • metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/chunk-xform is a transducer applied to each chunk of rows (dependent on chunk-size) or the entire group of rows if chunk-size is nil. The default is identity. It can be used to implement special behavior for each chunk, for example writing the chunk to a CSV file to load separately in the metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/do-insert! method. See the metabase.test.data.vertica for an example of this.

  • Connections are now created once and reused for much of test data loading. The second argument to metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.load-data/do-insert! is now a java.sql.Connection instead of a clojure.java.jdbc spec.

  • Similarly, metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.execute/execute-sql! and helper functions like metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc.execute/sequentially-execute-sql! are now called with a java.sql.Connection instead of both a DatabaseDefinition and either :server or :db context; the appropriate connection type is created automatically and passed in in the calling code. Update your method implementations and usages accordingly.

  • Added method metabase.test.data.interface/dataset-already-loaded? to check if a test dataset has already been loaded. JDBC-based drivers have a default implementation that checks whether we can connect to the database; you may need to override this for drivers that don’t actually physically create new databases in tests. You can check whether your JDBC-based driver works correctly using the default implementation by running the test metabase.test.data.sql-jdbc-test/dataset-already-loaded?-test.

  • metabase.test.data.sql.ddl/insert-rows-ddl-statements has been renamed to metabase.test.data.sql.ddl/insert-rows-dml-statements, since INSERT is DML, not DDL. Please update your method implementations accordingly.

  • The :foreign-keys driver feature has been removed. :metadata/keys-constraints should be used for drivers that support foreign key relationships reporting during sync. Implicit joins now depend on the :left-join feature instead. The default value is true for :sql based drivers. All join features are now enabled for :sql based drivers by default. Previously, those depended on the :foreign-keys feature. If your driver supports :left-join, the test for remapping and implicit joins will be now executed.

  • The:parameterized-sql driver feature has been added to distinguish drivers that don’t support parametrized SQL in tests. Currently, this is disabled only for :sparksql.

  • The test methods metabase.test.data.interface/supports-time-type? and metabase.test.data.interface/supports-timestamptz-type? have been removed and replaced by the features :test/time-type and :test/timestamptz-type respectively. If you implemented these methods, replace implementations with implementations of metabase.driver/database-supports? for your driver and the equivalent feature keyword instead.

  • Drivers that use metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/->honeysql can implement :metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/nfc-path to include the nfc-path in the field identifier. So that record-like fields can be referenced with <table>.<record>.<record-field>. See bigquery-cloud-sdk for an example. Defaults to nil to indicate that the path should not be part of the identifier.

  • :test/dynamic-dataset-loading feature has been added. It enables drivers to bail out of tests that require creation of new, not pre-loaded, dataset during test run time.

  • The :temporal/requires-default-unit feature has been added. It should be false for most drivers, but it’s necessary for a few (like the old, pre-JDBC Druid driver) to find all temporal field refs and put a :temporal-unit :default on them. That default setting was previously done for all drivers, but it introduced some downstream issues, so now only those drivers which need it can set the feature.

Metabase 0.50.17

  • Added method metabase.driver/incorporate-auth-provider-details for driver specific behavior required to incorporate response of an auth-provider into the DB details. In most cases this means setting the :password and/or :username based on the auth-provider and its response.

Metabase 0.50.16

  • :type/fingerprinting-unsupported has been added in the metabase.types namespace. Similar to :type/field-values-unsupported for field values scanning, it is used to determine whether a specific field should have its fingerprint computed or not. At the time of writing that logic is performed in metabase.sync.analyze.fingerprint/fields-to-fingerprint-base-clause.

  • :type/Large has been also been added in the metabase.types namespace. It can be used by driver authors to signal that a specific field contains large enough values to skip fingerprinting or field values scanning. It can be used for other purposes as well in the future. Examples include Oracle CLOB or Postgres JSON columns.

Metabase 0.50.0

  • The Metabase metabase.mbql.* namespaces have been moved to metabase.legacy-mbql.*. You probably didn’t need to use these namespaces in your driver, but if you did, please update them.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/truncate! has been added. This method is used to delete a table’s rows in the most efficient way possible. This is currently only required for drivers that support the :uploads feature, and has a default implementation for JDBC-based drivers.

  • New feature :window-functions/cumulative has been added. Drivers that implement this method are expected to implement the cumulative sum (:cum-sum) and cumulative count (:cum-count) aggregation clauses in their native query language. For non-SQL drivers (drivers not based on our :sql or :sql-jdbc drivers), this feature flag is set to false by default; the old (broken) post-processing implementations of cumulative aggregations will continue to be used. (See issues #13634 and #15118 for more information on why the old implementation is broken.)

    Non-SQL drivers should be updated to implement cumulative aggregations natively if possible.

    The SQL implementation uses OVER (...) expressions. It will automatically move GROUP BY expressions like date_trunc() into a SUBSELECT so fussy databases like BigQuery can reference plain column identifiers. The actual SQL generated will look something like

    SELECT
  created_at_month,
  sum(sum(total) OVER (ORDER BY created_at_month ROWS UNBOUNDED PRECEDING) AS cumulative_sum
FROM (
  SELECT
    date_trunc('month', created_at) AS created_at_month,
    total
  FROM
    my_table
  ) source
GROUP BY
  created_at_month
ORDER BY
  created_at_month

    Non-SQL drivers can use metabase.query-processor.util.transformations.nest-breakouts/nest-breakouts-in-stages-with-window-aggregation if they want to leverage the same query transformation. See the default :sql implementation of metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/preprocess for an example of using this transformation when needed.

    You can run the new tests in metabase.query-processor-test.cumulative-aggregation-test to verify that your driver implementation is working correctly.

  • metabase.driver.common/class->base-type no longer supports Joda Time classes. They have been deprecated since 2019.

  • New feature :window-functions/offset has been added to signify that a driver supports the new MBQL :offset clause (equivalent of SQL lead and lag functions). This is enabled by default for :sql and :sql-jdbc-based drivers. Other drivers should add an implementation for this clause and enable the feature flag.

  • :type/field-values-unsupported was added in metabase.types namespace. It is used in field values computation logic, to determine whether a specific field should have its field values computed or not. At the time of writing that is performed in metabase.models.field-values/field-should-have-field-values?. Deriving from it, driver developers have a way to out of field values computation for fields that are incompatible with the query used for computation. Example could be Druid’s COMPLEX<JSON> database type fields. See the :druid-jdbc implementation of sql-jdbc.sync/database-type->base-type in the metabase.driver.druid-jdbc and derivations in the metabase.types namespace for an example.

  • New feature :metadata/key-constraints has been added to signify that a driver support defining and enforcing foreign key constraints at the schema level. This is a different, stronger condition than :foreign-keys. Some databases (Presto, Athena, etc.) support querying over foreign key relationships (:foreign-keys) but do not track or enforce those relationships in the schema. Defaults to true in :sql and :sql-jdbc drivers; set to false in the first-party SparkSQL, Presto and Athena drivers.

  • New feature :connection/multiple-databases has been added to indicate whether a connection to this driver corresponds to multiple databases or just one. The default is false, where a connection specifies a single database. This is the common case for classic relational DBs like Postgres, and some cloud databases. In contrast, a driver like Athena sets this to true because it connects to an S3 bucket and treats each file within it as a database.

  • New feature :identifiers-with-spaces has been added to indicate where a driver supports identifiers like table or column names that contains a space character. Defaults to false.

  • New feature :uuid-type has been added to indicate that this database is able to distinguish and filter against UUIDs. Only a few database support native UUID types. The default is false.

Metabase 0.49.22

  • A new optional method metabase.driver.sql/json-field-length has been added. It should be implemented for all drivers that derive from :sql and support the :nested-field-columns feature. If implemented, Metabase will skip querying large JSON values during the “sync-fields” step that could otherwise slow down the inference of nested field columns and cause Metabase to run out of heap space.

Metabase 0.49.9

  • Another driver feature has been added: upload-with-auto-pk. It only affects drivers that support uploads, and is optional to support. Drivers support this feature by default, and can choose not to support it if there is no way to create a table with an auto-incrementing integer column. The driver can override the default using driver/database-supports?.

Metabase 0.49.1

  • Another driver feature has been added: describe-fields. If a driver opts-in to supporting this feature, The multimethod metabase.driver/describe-fields must be implemented, as a replacement for metabase.driver/describe-table.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.describe-table/describe-fields-sql has been added. The method needs to be implemented if the driver supports describe-fields and you want to use the default JDBC implementation of metabase.driver/describe-fields.

Metabase 0.49.0

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/describe-table-fks has been deprecated in favor of metabase.driver/describe-fks. metabase.driver/describe-table-fks will be removed in 0.52.0.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/describe-fks has been added. The method needs to be implemented if the database supports the :foreign-keys and :describe-fks features. It replaces the metabase.driver/describe-table-fks method, which is now deprecated.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.describe-table/describe-fks-sql has been added. The method needs to be implemented if you want to use the default JDBC implementation of metabase.driver/describe-fks.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/alter-columns! has been added. This method is used to alter a table’s columns in the database. This is currently only required for drivers that support the :uploads feature, and has a default implementation for JDBC-based drivers.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/alter-columns-sql has been added. The method allows you to customize the query used by the default JDBC implementation of metabase.driver/alter-columns!.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/current-user-table-privileges has been added. JDBC-based drivers can implement this to improve the performance of the default SQL JDBC implementation of metabase.driver/describe-database. It needs to be implemented if the database supports the :table-privileges feature and the driver is JDBC-based.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/create-table! can take an additional optional map with an optional key primary-key. metabase.driver/upload-type->database-type must also be changed, so that if :metabase.upload/auto-incrementing-int-pk is provided as the upload-type argument, the function should return a type without the primary-key constraint included. See PR #22166 for more information. These changes only need to be implemented if the database supports the :uploads feature.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/create-auto-pk-with-append-csv? has been added. The method only needs to be implemented if the database supported the :uploads feature in 47 or earlier, and should return true if so.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/add-columns! has been added. This method is used to add columns to a table in the database. It only needs to be implemented if the database supported the :uploads feature in 47 or earlier.

  • A new driver method has been added metabase.driver/describe-table-indexes along with a new feature :index-info. This method is used to get a set of column names that are indexed or are the first columns in a composite index.

  • metabase.util.honeysql-extensions, deprecated in 0.46.0, has been removed. SQL-based drivers using Honey SQL 1 are no longer supported. See 0.46.0 notes for more information. metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/honey-sql-version is now deprecated and no longer called. All drivers are assumed to use Honey SQL 2.

  • The method metabase.driver.sql.parameters.substitution/align-temporal-unit-with-param-type is now deprecated. Use metabase.driver.sql.parameters.substitution/align-temporal-unit-with-param-type-and-value instead, which has access to value and therefore provides more flexibility for choosing the right conversion unit.

Metabase 0.48.0

  • The MBQL schema in metabase.mbql.schema now uses Malli instead of Schema. If you were using this namespace in combination with Schema, you’ll want to update your code to use Malli instead.

  • Another driver feature has been added: :table-privileges. This feature signals whether we can store the table-level privileges for the database on database sync.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/current-user-table-privileges has been added. This method is used to get the set of privileges the database connection’s current user has. It needs to be implemented if the database supports the :table-privileges feature.

  • The following functions in metabase.query-processor.store (qp.store) are now deprecated

    • qp.store/database
    • qp.store/table
    • qp.store/field

    Update usages of the to the corresponding functions in metabase.lib.metadata (lib.metadata):

    (qp.store/database)       => (lib.metadata/database (qp.store/metadata-provider))
(qp.store/table table-id) => (lib.metadata/table (qp.store/metadata-provider) table-id)
(qp.store/field field-id) => (lib.metadata/field (qp.store/metadata-provider) field-id)

    Note that the new methods return keys as kebab-case rather than snake_case.

  • Similarly, drivers should NOT access the application database directly (via toucan functions or otherwise); use lib.metadata functions instead. This access may be blocked in a future release.

  • SQL drivers that implement metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/->honeysql for metabase.models.table/Table/:model/Table should be updated to implement it for :metadata/table instead. As with the changes above, the main difference is that the new metadata maps use kebab-case keys rather than snake_case keys.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/cast-field-if-needed now expects a kebab-cased field as returned by lib.metadata/field.

  • metabase.query-processor.store/fetch-and-store-database!, metabase.query-processor.store/fetch-and-store-tables!, and metabase.query-processor.store/fetch-and-store-fields! have been removed. Things are now fetched automatically as needed and these calls are no longer necessary.

  • metabase.models.field/json-field? has been removed, use metabase.lib.field/json-field? instead. Note that the new function takes a Field as returned by lib.metadata/field, i.e. a kebab-case map.

  • Tests should try to avoid using any of the with-temp helpers or application database objects; instead, use the metadata functions above and and the helper metadata providers in metabase.lib, metabase.lib.test-util, and metabase.query-processor.test-util for mocking them, such as mock-metadata-provider, metabase-provider-with-cards-for-queries, remap-metadata-provider, and merged-mock-metadata-provider.

  • metabase.query-processor.util.add-alias-info/field-reference is now deprecated. If your driver implemented it, implement metabase.query-processor.util.add-alias-info/field-reference-mlv2 instead. The only difference between the two is that the latter is passed Field metadata with kebab-case keys while the former is passed legacy metadata with snake_case keys.

  • metabase.driver/current-db-time, deprecated in 0.34, and related methods and helper functions, have been removed. Implement metabase.driver/db-default-timezone instead.

  • metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/db-default-timezone, a helper for writing metabase.driver/db-default-timezone implementations for JDBC-based drivers, has been deprecated, and will be removed in 0.51.0 or later. You can easily implement metabase.driver/db-default-timezone directly, and use metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.execute/do-with-connection-with-options to get a java.sql.Connection for a Database.

  • Added a new multimethod metabase.driver.sql.parameters.substitution/align-temporal-unit-with-param-type, which returns a suitable temporal unit conversion keyword for field, param-type and the given driver. The resulting keyword will be used to call the corresponding metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/date implementation to convert the field. Returns nil if the conversion is not necessary for this field and param-type combination.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.execute/inject-remark has been added. It allows JDBC-based drivers to override the default behavior of how SQL query remarks are added to queries (prepending them as a comment).

  • The arity of multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/fallback-metadata-query has been updated from 3 to 4, it now takes an additional db argument. The new function arguments are: [driver db-name-or-nil schema table].

Metabase 0.47.0

  • A new driver feature has been added: :schemas. This feature signals whether the database organizes tables in schemas (also known as namespaces) or not. Most databases have schemas so this feature is on by default. An implementation of the multimethod metabase.driver/database-supports? for :schemas is required only if the database doesn’t store tables in schemas.

  • Another driver feature has been added: :uploads. The :uploads feature signals whether the database supports uploading CSV files to tables in the database. To support the uploads feature, implement the following new multimethods: metabase.driver/create-table! (creates a table), metabase.driver/drop-table! (drops a table), and metabase.driver/insert-into! (inserts values into a table).

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/syncable-schemas has been added. This method is used to list schemas to upload CSVs to, and it should include all schemas that can be synced. Currently it only needs to be implemented if the database has schema, and the database supports the :uploads feature.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/supports? has been deprecated in favor of metabase.driver/database-supports?. The existing default implementation of database-supports? currently calls supports?, but it will be removed in 0.50.0.

  • metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.execute/connection-with-timezone has been marked deprecated and is scheduled for removal in Metabase 0.50.0. The new method metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.execute/do-with-connection-with-options replaces it. Migration to the new method is straightforward. See PR #22166 for more information. You should use metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.execute/do-with-connection-with-options instead of clojure.java.jdbc/with-db-connection or clojure.java.jdbc/get-connection going forward.

  • The multimethods set-role!, set-role-statement, and default-database-role have been added. These methods are used to enable connection impersonation, which is a new feature added in 0.47.0. Connection impersonation allows users to be assigned to specific database roles which are set before any queries are executed, so that access to tables can be restricted at the database level instead of (or in conjunction with) Metabase’s built-in permissions system.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.describe-table/get-table-pks is changed to return a vector instea of a set.

  • The function metabase.query-processor.timezone/report-timezone-id-if-supported has been updated to take an additional database argument for the arity which previously had one argument. This function might be used in the implementation of a driver’s multimethods.

  • metabase.driver/prettify-native-form was added to enable driver developers use native form formatting specific to their driver. For details see the PR #34991.

Metabase 0.46.0

  • The process for building a driver has changed slightly in Metabase 0.46.0. Your build command should now look something like this:

    # Example for building the driver with bash or similar

# switch to the local checkout of the Metabase repo
cd /path/to/metabase/repo

# get absolute path to the driver project directory
DRIVER_PATH=`readlink -f ~/sudoku-driver`

# Build driver. See explanation in sample Sudoku driver README
clojure \
  -Sdeps "{:aliases {:sudoku {:extra-deps {com.metabase/sudoku-driver {:local/root \"$DRIVER_PATH\"}}}}}"  \
  -X:build:sudoku \
  build-drivers.build-driver/build-driver! \
  "{:driver :sudoku, :project-dir \"$DRIVER_PATH\", :target-dir \"$DRIVER_PATH/target\"}"

    Take a look at our build instructions for the sample Sudoku driver for an explanation of the command.

    Note that while this command itself is quite a lot to type, you no longer need to specify a :build alias in your driver’s deps.edn file.

    Please upvote https://ask.clojure.org/index.php/7843/allow-specifying-aliases-coordinates-that-point-projects , which will allow us to simplify the driver build command in the future.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/table-rows-sample has been added. This method is used in situations where Metabase needs a limited sample from a table, like when fingerprinting. The default implementation defined in the metabase.db.metadata-queries namespace runs an MBQL query using the regular query processor to produce the sample rows. This is good enough in most cases, so this multimethod should not be implemented unless really necessary. Currently, the only case when a special implementation is used is for BigQuery, which does not respect limit clauses.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/datetime-diff has been added. This method is used by implementations of ->honeysql for the :datetime-diff clause. It is recommended to implement this if you want to use the default SQL implementation of ->honeysql for the :datetime-diff, which includes validation of argument types across all units.

  • The multimethod metabase.query-processor.util.add-alias-info/field-reference has been added. This method is used to produce a reference to a field by the add-alias-info middleware. (Note that this middleware is optional, currently it is only used by the SQL and MongoDB drivers.) The default implementation returns the name of the field instance. It should be overridden if just the name is not a valid a valid reference. For example, MongoDB supports nested documents and references to nested fields should contain the whole path. See the namespace metabase.driver.mongo.query-processor for an alternative implementation.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/syncable-schemas (aliased as metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync/syncable-schemas), which was deprecated in 0.43.0, has been removed. Implement metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/filtered-syncable-schemas instead. See 0.43.0 notes below for more details.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver/format-custom-field-name, which was deprecated in 0.42.0, has been removed. Implement metabase.driver/escape-alias instead. See 0.42.0 notes below for more information.

  • The multimethod metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.execute/read-column, which was deprecated in 0.35.0, has been removed. Implement metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.execute/read-column-thunk instead. See 0.35.0 notes below for more information.

Honey SQL 2

The following only applies to SQL drivers; you can ignore it for non-SQL drivers.

Prior to Metabase 0.46.0, SQL drivers used Honey SQL 1 as an intermediate target when compiling queries. In 0.46.0 we have began the process of migrating to Honey SQL 2 as our new intermediate target.

We plan to continue to support use of Honey SQL 1 until Metabase 0.49.0. Please be sure to migrate your drivers before then.

In Metabase 0.46.x, 0.47.x, and 0.48.x, you can specify which version of Honey SQL you driver should use by implementing the metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/honey-sql-version multimethod:

(require '[metabase.driver.sql.query-processor :as sql.qp])

;;; use Honey SQL 2 for :my-driver
(defmethod sql.qp/honey-sql-version :my-driver
  [_driver]
  2)

This method must return either 1 or 2. Currently, the default implementation returns 1. Effectively this means you currently have to opt-in to Honey SQL 2 compilation. It’s a good idea to do this sooner rather than later so your driver is prepared for 0.49.0 well in advance.

In Metabase 0.47.x or 0.48.x we will likely change the default Honey SQL version to 2 to ensure everyone is aware of the upcoming breaking changes in 0.49.0 and give them one or two release cycles to update their drivers to target Honey SQL 2. You will still be able to opt-in to using Honey SQL 1 until 0.49.0 by implementing sql.qp/honey-sql-version and returning 1.

What You Need to Change

Our Honey SQL utility namespace, metabase.util.honeysql-extensions, commonly aliased as hx, has been updated to generate forms appropriate for either Honey SQL 1 or Honey SQL 2. This is done automatically based on your driver’s honey-sql-version. metabase.driver.sql.query-processor itself also supports both targets in the same way.

The actual changes you will need to make to your driver code will probably be fairly small. The most important things to note when porting your driver:

  1. Avoid use of things from Honey SQL 1 namespaces like honeysql.core or honeysql.format. If you must, use Honey SQL honey.sql instead; you may not need either.

  2. While you can continue to use metabase.util.honeysql-extensions in the short term, since it can target either version of Honey SQL, we will probably remove this namespace at some point in the future. Update your code to use metabase.util.honey-sql-2 instead. The namespaces implement an almost identical set of helper functions, so all you should need to switch is which one you :require in your ns form.

  3. honeysql.core/call no longer exists; instead of a form like (hsql/call :my_function 1 2), you simply return a plain vector like [:my_function 1 2]. (hsql/raw "x") is now[:raw "x"]. New handlers can be registered with Honey SQL 2 with honey.sql/register-fn!. There is no equivalent of the Honey SQL 1 honeysql.format./ToSql protocol, so you should no longer define one-off types to implement custom SQL compilation rules. Use honey.sql/register-fn! instead.

  4. In Honey SQL 1 you were able to register functions to a more limited extent by implementing the multimethod honeysql.format/fn-handler. Metabase registered the functions :extract, :distinct-count, and :percentile-cont in this way. For Honey SQL 2, we’ve registered these functions as qualified keywords in the metabase.util.honey-sql-2 namespace, to prevent confusion as to where they’re defined. Thus you’ll need to update the keyword if you’re using these functions.

    ;;; Honey SQL 1
(hsql/call :distinct-count expr)

    becomes

    ;;; Honey SQL 2
(require '[metabase.util.honey-sql-2 :as h2x])

[::h2x/distinct-count expr]

  5. Because custom expressions are now just plain vectors like [:my_function 1], you may need to wrap expressions in an additional vector if they appear inside :select, :from, or other places where a vector could be interpreted as [expression alias]. e.g.

    ;; Honey SQL 1
(honeysql.core/format {:select [[:my_function 1]]})
;; => ["SELECT my_function AS 1"]

;; Honey SQL 2
;;
;; WRONG
(honey.sql/format {:select [[:my_function 1]]})
;; => ["SELECT my_function AS ?" 1]

;; CORRECT
(honey.sql/format {:select [[[:my_function 1]]]})
;; => ["SELECT MY_FUNCTION(?)" 1]

    The SQL query processor does this automatically for forms it generates, so you only need to worry about this if you’re overriding the way it generates :select or other top-level clauses.

  6. Numbers are parameterized by default, e.g. {:select [1]} becomes SELECT ? rather than SELECT 1. You can use :inline to force the SQL to be generated inline instead: {:select [[[:inline 1]]]} becomes SELECT 1. Numbers generated by the SQL query processor code should automatically be inlined, but you may need to make sure any numbers you generate are wrapped in :inline if they can end up as expressions inside a GROUP BY clause. Some databases can recognize expressions as being the same thing only when they are not parameterized:

    -- This is okay
SELECT x + 1
FROM table
GROUP BY x + 1

-- Bad: DB doesn't know whether the two x + ? expressions are the same thing
SELECT x + ?
FROM table
GROUP BY x + ?

Exercise caution when :inlineing things – take care not to use it on untrusted strings or other avenues for SQL injection. Only inlining things that are a number? is a safe bet.

Please read Differences between Honey SQL 1.x and 2.x for more information on the differences between the library versions.

Note: these breaking changes will hopefully be fixed before 0.46.0 ships. This will be updated if they are.

The classes metabase.util.honeysql_extensions.Identifer and metabase.util.honeysql_extensions.TypedHoneySQLForm have been moved to metabase.util.honey_sql_1.Identifer and metabase.util.honey_sql_1.TypedHoneySQLForm, respectively. On the off chance that your driver directly referencing these class names, you may need to update things to use the new class names.

Similarly, metabase.util.honeysql-extensions/->AtTimeZone has been removed; use metabase.util.honeysql-extensions/at-time-zone instead.

Metabase 0.45.0

  • metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.connection/details->connection-spec-for-testing-connection has been removed in Metabase 0.45.0, because it leaked SSH tunnels. See #24445. If you are using this function, please update your code to use metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.connection/with-connection-spec-for-testing-connection instead, which properly cleans up after itself.

New methods

  • metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.describe-table-fields has been added. Implement this method if you want to override the default behavior for fetching field metadata (such as types) for a table.

  • metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.describe-table/get-table-pks has been added. This methods is used to get a set of pks given a table.

  • ->honeysql [<driver> :convert-timezone] has been added. Implement this method if you want your driver to support the convertTimezone expression. This method takes 2 or 3 arguments and returns a timestamp without time zone column.

Metabase 0.43.0

  • The :expressions map in an MBQL query now uses strings as keys rather than keywords (see #14647). You only need to be concerned with this if you are accessing or manipulating this map directly. Drivers deriving from :sql implementing ->honeysql for [<driver> :expression] may need to be updated. A utility function, metabase.mbql.util/expression-with-name, has been available since at least Metabase 0.35.0 and handles both types of keys. It is highly recommended that you use this function rather than accessing :expressions directly, as doing so can make your driver compatible with both 0.42.0 and with 0.43.0 and newer.

  • There is now a describe-nested-field-columns method under sql-jdbc.sync namespace which returns an instance of NestedFCMetadata. This is in order to allow JSON columns in Postgres and eventually other DB’s which are usually ordinary RDBMS’s but then sometimes they have a denormalized column with JSON or some other semantics. Given a table with denormalized columns which have nested field semantics (so, typed sub-fields which are still denormalized but stable in type between rows), return value should be a NestedFCMetadata, a map of flattened key paths to the detected sub-field. Field detection in syncing will then be enriched with those nested types. This is materially different from the way we do it for mongo because every kind of JSON column is different, but it’s going to run every sync so it can’t be too slow, even on enormous tables and enormous denormalized columns on those enormous tables.

Metabase 0.42.0

Changes in Metabase 0.42.0 affect drivers that derive from :sql (including :sql-jdbc). Non-SQL drivers likely will require no changes.

0.42.0 introduces several significant changes to the way the SQL query processor compiles and determines aliases for MBQL :field clauses. For more background, see pull request #19384.

If you were manipulating Field or Table aliases, we consolidated a lot of overlapping vars and methods, which means you may need to delete deprecated method implementations.

Significant changes

  • The metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/->honeysql method for Field instances, e.g.

    (defmethod sql.qp/->honeysql [:my-driver (class Field)]
  [driver field]
  ...)

    is no longer invoked. All compilation is now handled by the MBQL :field clause method, e.g.

    (defmethod sql.qp/->honeysql [:my-driver :field]
  [driver field-clause]
  ...)

    If you were doing something special here, you’ll need to move that special login into [<driver> :field] instead. (You may no longer need this special logic, however – see below.)

  • :field, :expression, and :aggregation-options clauses now contain information about what aliases you should use to refer to them on both the left-hand side and right-hand side of SQL AS or elsewhere in a query. See PR #19610 for a detailed discussion about the new information, hereafter referred to as the /#19610 information/.

  • If you have a custom implementation of ->honeysql for :field or (class Field): ->honeysql methods for :field should use or replace the #19610 information rather than attempting to determine or override it in some other fashion.

New methods

  • metabase.driver/escape-alias (moved from metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/escape-alias, which was introduced in 0.41.0) is now used to generate the #19610 information and used consistently across the SQL QP code. If you need to transform generated Field aliases for any reason (such as escaping disallowed characters), implement this method.

  • metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/filtered-syncable-schemas has been added, and will eventually replace metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/syncable-schemas. It serves a similar purpose, except that it’s also passed the inclusion and exclusion patterns (ex: auth*,data*) to further filter schemas that will be synced.

Deprecated methods and vars

The following methods and vars are slated for removal in Metabase 0.45.0 unless otherwise noted.

  • metabase.driver/format-custom-field-name is now unused. Implement metabase.driver/escape-alias instead.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/escape-alias has been renamed to metabase.driver/escape-alias. Everything else is the same.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/field-clause->alias no longer uses the optional parameter unique-name-fn. Aliases are now made unique automatically, after escaping them; implement metabase.driver/escape-alias if you need to do something special before they are made unique. (Unique aliases are also escaped a second time if you need to do something /really/ special.)

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/field->alias, which was deprecated in 0.41.0, is now unused in 0.42.0. Implementing this method no longer has any effect. Implement metabase.driver/escape-alias instead if you need to do something special; use the #19610 information if you need to escape the alias for one reason or another. This method is still slated for removal in Metabase 0.44.0.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/*field-options* is now unused and is no longer bound automatically. If you need field options for some reason, see our SQL Server driver for an example on how to create it.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/*table-alias* is now unused and is no longer bound automatically. Use or override :metabase.query-processor.util.add-alias-info/source-table from the #19610 information instead.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/*source-query* is now unused and is no longer bound automatically. Use metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/*inner-query* instead, which is always bound, even if we aren’t inside of a source query.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/field->identifier is now unused. Implementing this method should no longer be necessary under any circumstances. Override ->honeysql for [<driver> :field] and manipulate the #19610 information if you need to do something special here.

  • metabase.driver.sql.query-processor/prefix-field-alias is no longer used. Previously, it was made available to give drivers a chance to escape automatically generated aliases for joined Fields. This is no longer necessary, because metabase.driver/escape-alias is called on automatically generates aliases. Implement metabase.driver/escape-alias if you need to do something special.
  • metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/syncable-schemas has been deprecated in favor of metabase.driver.sql-jdbc.sync.interface/filtered-syncable-schemas (see above). The existing default implementation of syncable-schemas currently calls filtered-syncable-schemas (with nil filters, i.e. the filtering operation is actually a no-op), but it will eventually be removed.

Removed Methods and Vars

  • metabase.mbql.schema/DatetimeFieldUnit, deprecated in 0.39.0, is now removed.

Older versions

Before 0.42.0, this information was tracked in our Wiki. You can find changes for versions before 0.42.0 in the table below:

Version Wiki page
0.41.0 changes
0.40.0 No changes.
0.39.0 No changes.
0.38.0 changes
0.37.0 changes
0.36.0 changes
0.35.0 changes

Read docs for other versions of Metabase.