Introduction

Overview of SQL Linting and Formatting

is currently only available in our preview release. Preview features are not recommended for production use. For more information on how to install or update to the Preview release channel, see here.

Overview

SDF contains an integrated high performance SQL linter and formatter. Linting and formatting are core competencies of code-hygiene designed ensure code is consistent across your organization, simplify readability, code reviews, and promote standardization.

SDF’s SQL Linter has 4 crucial characteristics.

1. It is incredibly high performance, outperforming SQLFluff by well over 100X in most scenarios.
2. It has a high degree of overlap with SQL Fluff to ensure easy migration for existing SQLFLuff users.
3. It is out-of-the-box compatible with all SDF Jinja and configuration

SDF’s auto-formatter works in conjunction with the linter to empower teams to write more unified SQL code.

Using the linter is easy.

• Unless otherwise configured, every SDF workspace has Default Rules.
• All files listed in your includes paths will be linted.
• Run sdf lint to lint sql files
• Run sdf lint path/to/file.sql to lint a subset of SQL files
• Run sdf lint --fix to fix issues where possible
• Run sdf format to format sql files

To create a global linter configuration for your workspace, you can use the sdf-args block in your sdf workspace file. These defaults are command line flags that are implicitly added to each invocation of sdf lint.

workspace.sdf.yml

sdf-args
   lint: >
     -w <lint-rule>=<option>
     ...

Dialect Compatibility

SQL linting is dialect specific. Currently, SDF Lint is only available for the Snowflake and BigQuery SQL dialects. Other dialects are coming soon.

Dialect	Availability
Snowflake	🟢
BigQuery	🟢
Redshift	🟡
Trino	🔴
SparkSQL	🔴

Default Rules

SDF has a set of default lint rules. Default rules designed to provide a simple configuration for most data teams. All defaults can be auto-fixed or overwritten through manual configuration.

SDF’s lint defaults are equivalent to the following sdf-args configuration. If no overrides for sdf-args are specified, any invocation of sdf lint will use the default lint defaults. These defaults are as below:

workspace.sdf.yml

sdf-args
   lint: >
      -w capitalization-keywords=consistent 
      -w capitalization-literals=consistent 
      -w capitalization-types=consistent 
      -w capitalization-functions=consistent 
      -w refernces-quoting
      -w structure-else-null
      -w structure-unused-cte
      -w structure-distinct
      -w structure-column-order
      -w convention-terminator

All other rules are turned off by default.

All default lint rules can be automatically fixed with sdf lint --fix

Automatically Fix Issues

• Use sdf lint --fix to automatically resolve linting issues where possible
• For issues that can’t be automatically fixed, SDF will provide error reports

fix.sql

select * FROM test

Ignore Warnings

If you would like to ignore a lint warning for whatever reason, add the inline comment -- noqa to your query. This will prevent that line from being evaluated by the linter, for all rules.

nofix.sql

SeLeCt * from test --noqa

Customize and Configure

• By default, sdf lint uses SDF’s recommended rules and configuration
• To customize linter rules according to your preferences, override the default settings with a sdf-args block in your workspace.sdf.yml

The sdf-args: config block in a workspace file will override the default configuration.

Default Rules

Per default, every SDF project has the following linter configuration turned on implicitly. If you specify your own YML linter configuration, you will turn off the default rules and need to specify all linting rules yourself.

Rules Reference

For the full list of rules and configuration options, please visit our lint rules reference page

Type	Configuration	SDF Err	SQLFluff Err	Auto-Fix	Default
Syntax	capitalization_keywords	SDF107	L010	✅	consistent
Syntax	capitalization-literal	SDF108, SDF109	L040	✅	consistent
Syntax	capitalization-type	SDF110	L063	✅	consistent
Syntax	capitalization-function	SDF106	L030	✅	consistent
Syntax	convention-blocked-words	SDF124	L029	❌	[]
Syntax	references-keywords	SDF125	L029	❌	[]
Syntax	references-special-chars	SDF117	L057	❌	""
Syntax	references-quoting	SDF118	L059	✅	on
Syntax	references-consistent	SDF112	L028	❌	off
Syntax	references-qualification	SDF116	L027	❌	off
Syntax	ambiguous-column-references	SDF105	L054	❌	off
Syntax	structure-else-null	SDF119	L035	✅	on
Syntax	structure-simple-case	SDF120	L043	❌	off
Syntax	structure-unused-cte	SDF121	L045	✅	only
Syntax	structure-nested-case	SDF122	L058	❌	off
Syntax	structure-distinct	SDF123	L015	✅	on
Syntax	structure-join-condition-order	SDF114	ST09	❌	off
Syntax	structure-column-order	SDF115	L034	✅	off
Syntax	convention-terminator	SDF111	L052	✅	on
Syntax	convention-comma	SDF104	N/A	✅	on