Snowflake Describe queries to show columns in a table

[brittianwarner]

Describe the feature

The information_schema is extremely slow in Snowflake and it would be nice to use the describe functionality described here:https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/sql/desc-table.html

I noticed that 0.16.0 implemented "show schema" but this only solved part of the problem.

I am running many models in parallel and I am seeing issues around the information schema where queries can take around a minute to return table information.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I don't know of any alternatives since this is built into DBT.

Additional context

This feature is database specific.

Who will this benefit?

Anyone using Snowflake.

[brittianwarner]

I am also getting these errors quite a bit: 090030 (22000): Information schema query returned too much data. Please repeat query with more selective predicates. compiled SQL at dbt/target/compiled

[drewbanin]

Hey @brittianwarner - thanks for opening this issue! We had a good thread on this topic which is worth checking out if you haven't seen it already: #1877

Let's make this happen. desc table sounds like it will work great, and we've implemented a lot of the things we needed to implement to make this particular change tractable.

[brittianwarner]

Sounds great! Let me know if I can help in any way.