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Snowflake adapter behavior changes

The following are the current behavior change flags that are specific to dbt-snowflake:

Flagdbt-snowflake: Introdbt-snowflake: MaturityStatus
snowflake_default_transient_dynamic_tables1.12.0TBDActive
snowflake_managed_iceberg_default1.12.0TBDActive

The snowflake_default_transient_dynamic_tables flag​

Available starting dbt-snowflake v1.12. The snowflake_default_transient_dynamic_tables flag controls whether Snowflake dynamic tables are created as transient when the model config does not explicitly set the transient config.

  • When set to false (default): Dynamic tables are created as permanent tables with a Fail-safe period unless you set transient: true for a specific model.
  • When set to true: Dynamic tables are created as transient (no Fail-safe period) when transient is not specified in the model config. Transient dynamic tables can reduce storage costs.

Set the snowflake_default_transient_dynamic_tables flag in your dbt_project.yml under the flags key. You can override the default setting using the transient config on dynamic table models.

The snowflake_managed_iceberg_default flag​

dbt v2

In dbt v2, this behavior is the default and there's no flag to set. external_volume defaults to SNOWFLAKE_MANAGED, and dbt omits base_location whenever the table uses Snowflake-managed storage.

Available starting dbt-snowflake v1.12. The snowflake_managed_iceberg_default flag controls what dbt does when a model sets table_format: iceberg for an Iceberg table without an external_volume.

Snowflake rejects BASE_LOCATION for Iceberg tables that use Snowflake-managed storage and returns the error BASE_LOCATION property is not supported for Iceberg tables using Snowflake Managed Storage. This flag lets dbt generate data definition language (DDL) that Snowflake Horizon accepts without requiring you to configure a catalog.

  • When set to false (default): dbt doesn't emit external_volume. Snowflake falls back to any default external volume set at the account, database, or schema level, and dbt still generates a base_location.
  • When set to true: dbt emits external_volume = 'SNOWFLAKE_MANAGED' and omits base_location, so the table uses Snowflake-managed storage.

The flag defaults to false to avoid changing the target storage for projects that rely on a default external volume set at the account, database, or schema level.

Two cases don't depend on this flag:

  • When you set external_volume to SNOWFLAKE_MANAGED, dbt always omits base_location. dbt resolves external_volume from the model config first and then from the catalog definition in catalogs.yml, so setting it in either place omits base_location.
  • When you set external_volume to a user-defined volume, such as Amazon S3, Azure, or Google Cloud Storage, dbt always emits both external_volume and base_location.

Set the flag in your dbt_project.yml under the flags key:

dbt_project.yml
flags:
  snowflake_managed_iceberg_default: true

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