# Schema Change Protection for dbt and BI | Silicon

URL: https://meetsilicon.com/product/schema-protection/

> Silicon checks every pull request against your dashboards, reports and metrics, flags what would break, and drafts the fix before it reaches production.

Downstream assets at risk
3
PR #482
Breaking change detected
2 min ago
customer_id renamed to account_id in fct_orders. 3 dashboards and 12 metrics depend on it. Fix PR drafted.
Reliability / Schema protection
# Catch breaking changes before they reach a dashboard
Silicon checks every pull request against the dashboards and metrics that depend on the models it changes. When a change would break one of them, it comments with the exact model and column affected and drafts a fix.
Book a demo
30-minute demo with the founder
Works with the stack you already run.
dbt
Snowflake
BigQuery
Databricks
Redshift
Postgres
ClickHouse
GitHub
Slack
dbt
Snowflake
BigQuery
Databricks
Redshift
Postgres
ClickHouse
GitHub
Slack
dbt
Snowflake
BigQuery
Databricks
Redshift
Postgres
ClickHouse
GitHub
Slack
Problem
## 60% of data teams shipped a breaking change in the last six months
Column renames, model changes and failed jobs silently break dashboards and metrics. The first person to notice is usually a stakeholder. (Monte Carlo, State of Data Quality, 2024)
- 01 A change ships silently and the CEO finds out first.
- 02 Nobody can say which dashboards a model change will touch.
- 03 The fix takes days because the cause is buried in a commit.
How it works
## Check each change, trace the cause and fix it
Check
Trace
Fix
01 Schema protection
### Impact checked on every pull request
Silicon compares the proposed schema with your live warehouse and every downstream asset, then comments on the PR with exactly what would break.
analytics/dbt #482 Rename customer_id to account_id in fct_orders
silicon bot commented just now
This change breaks 3 dashboards and 12 metrics.
- Revenue overview Dashboard
- Customer health Dashboard
- Weekly finance summary Report
- net_revenue (+11 more) Metric
Open fix PR View lineage
Features
## What it detects, what it protects, and where it alerts.
### What it detects
The changes that silently break analytics.
- Column renames
- Dropped columns
- Type changes
- Model changes
- Failed jobs
### What it protects
Everything downstream of your models.
- Dashboards
- Reports
- Metrics
- AI answers
- Data apps
### Where it alerts
Where your team will see it first.
- GitHub pull requests
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams (Pro)
Plans
## Included on every plan
| Team | Pro | Enterprise
Repositories | 1 | 3 | Custom
Git hosts | GitHub | GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket | GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket
Alerts | Slack | Slack and Microsoft Teams | Slack and Microsoft Teams
## What happens when a schema changes?
When a pull request changes a model, Silicon compares the new schema with your live warehouse and every dashboard, report and metric that depends on it. If anything would break, it comments on the pull request with the affected assets and can draft a fix pull request.
FAQ
## Questions, answered
### Which git hosts are supported? +
GitHub on every plan. GitLab, Azure DevOps and Bitbucket on Pro and Enterprise.
### Does schema protection need dbt? +
Schema protection reads the models and dependencies in your connected repository, whether they are defined in dbt or in Silicon YAML.
### Can Silicon open fixes automatically? +
Silicon drafts the fix as a pull request. Nothing merges without your team's review.
### How many repositories can I protect? +
One on Team, three on Pro, and a custom number on Enterprise.
## Related
- Dashboards as code ->
- What is schema drift? ->
- Prevent broken dashboards ->
## Tell us where your data lives today.
Book 30 minutes with the founder. Tell us where your data is today, and see Silicon running on sample data.
Book a demo
30-minute demo with the founder