Soda core 3.0.3+ introduced breaking change for count tests

Hello,

We have been using soda-core-snowflake 3.0.1 internally for quality checks and recently decided to test using 3.0.7. We found the following breaking change when trying to make a test using a column that is numeric in Snowflake:

When doing a missing_count > 0:

Soda 3.0.1:

SELECT 
  COUNT(*),
  COUNT(CASE WHEN NUMERIC_COLUMN IS NULL THEN 1 END),
  COUNT(CASE WHEN NUMERIC_COLUMN IS NULL THEN 1 END),
  COUNT(CASE WHEN NOT (NUMERIC_COLUMN IS NULL) AND NOT (REGEXP_LIKE(NUMERIC_COLUMN, '^ *[-+]? *[0-9]+ *$')) THEN 1 END) 
FROM schema.table

Soda 3.0.3 and up:

SELECT 
  COUNT(*),
  COUNT(CASE WHEN NUMERIC_COLUMN IS NULL THEN 1 END),
  COUNT(CASE WHEN NUMERIC_COLUMN IS NULL THEN 1 END),
  COUNT(CASE WHEN NOT (NUMERIC_COLUMN IS NULL) AND NOT (REGEXP_LIKE(COLLATE(NUMERIC_COLUMN, ''), '^ *[-+]? *[0-9]+ *$')) THEN 1 END) 
FROM schema.table

The collate breaks down in Snowflake without casting the numeric field to a string.

Release logs seem to point to @ScottAtDisney as the contributor to this change, not sure if @m1n0 has any context on this change as well.

If these tests were never meant for numeric columns it might be a good idea to update the documentation on this.

Thank you!

[ScottAtDisney]

Got it. That’s really helpful.

The Validity Metric doc states,

Valid formats apply only to columns using data type TEXT.

The NUMERIC_COLUMN is defined as NUMBER(3,0) so the (valid format: integer) metric would be out of scope as I understand the definition.

Since the data type of that column (NUMBER(3,0)) is enforced by the DB and the check is looking for an INTEGER, even if the check worked, it would always return passed.

A valid min/max metric could be used to check the range of integer values, but that column can only hold integers.

[ScottAtDisney]

Are you using a metric argument like,

• missing values
• missing regex
• missing format

Could you please share a minimal check file, the data type of the column and some sample data that creates this issue?