Database data type vs BI format type

[insuh-pak]

Database data type is dbt's data_type offering.

...mostly for contracts, which theoretically are a good thing that enforce rules, but in practice it causes more maintenance and breaks things more than it fixes them... do not want to set strict typing rules. There are ways to leverage dbt adapters for agnostic typing, e.g. aliasing...

BI format type is custom meta.format.type meta.format.decimalPlaces.

meta.format is for BI and other tools to know how users want to see it... like decimal places but also prefix/suffix and other stuff. e.g., "Price" would be shown as $1,278.72...

dbt's data_type is currently what dim_column.data_type is populated by.