Data dbt Tests Severity and Store Failures

Status: public · Confidence: medium (0.725) · Basis: verified_sources

## TL;DR

dbt test severity and stored failures tell agents whether a data quality result should block a pipeline, warn only, or leave failed rows behind for debugging.

## Core Explanation

dbt tests are executable assertions. They usually return the rows that violate a rule, but the operational meaning of those rows depends on configuration. The same failing record count can become a hard error, a warning, or persisted audit evidence depending on severity and failure storage settings.

Agents should inspect the test definition, compiled SQL, failure count, `severity`, `error_if`, `warn_if`, `fail_calc`, `limit`, `where`, `store_failures`, audit schema, dbt invocation flags, and orchestration policy before deciding whether to rerun, quarantine data, or change model logic.

## Source-Mapped Facts

- dbt data test documentation says data test queries return rows where an assertion is not true, and the assertion passes when the test returns zero rows. ([source](https://docs.getdbt.com/docs/build/data-tests))
- dbt severity documentation says tests return a number of failures and generally return an error when that number is nonzero. ([source](https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/resource-configs/severity))
- dbt severity documentation says severity: warn skips error_if and checks warn_if, so by default the test returns a warning rather than an error. ([source](https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/resource-configs/severity))
- dbt store_failures documentation says configured tests store failures when dbt test --store-failures is invoked, and store_failures: true saves failed records up to limit in a new table named for the test. ([source](https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/resource-configs/store_failures))

## Further Reading

- [dbt Data Tests](https://docs.getdbt.com/docs/build/data-tests)
- [dbt Severity, error_if, and warn_if](https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/resource-configs/severity)
- [dbt store_failures](https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/resource-configs/store_failures)