How does Metabase handle database changes?

I’m considering Metabase for basic analytics but I haven’t been able to figure out what happens when the schema of the underlying database changes (in our case PostgreSQL).

E.g., if I rename a table or a field in the database, will the dashboards we have in Metabase against the old schema break? If so, is there any guidance for how to solve the issues etc?

If there are any resources in the docs anyone can point me to, that’d be great.

Thanks!

Hi @eahlberg
There’s not really any graceful way to handle that.

It doesn’t matter if you have written the question in SQL or using the query builder in Metabase, if your database changes schema, then those questions will stop working until manually changed to new schema.

How would you expect Metabase to handle changes to the schema for existing questions?

Sounds similar to this issue: https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/11128

@flamber thanks for clarifying and for the pointer to the issue! :bowing_man:

Honestly, I don’t know how that could be achieved (which probably was what made me start thinking about it in the first place), or a good way to handle it.

In our case, it’s probably better to come back to Metabase when our database schema is a bit more stable.

Solution is to use views rather than the raw tables. That way, when your database schema changes, it’s just a case of changing the view. You can keep the same column names for the view and Metabase is unaware that anything has changed.

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