Resource identifiers

Glean Resource Names (GRNs)

A Glean Resource Name or GRN is a way to reference Glean resources in a stable way. As a resource is changed, renamed, moved between collections, etc. its GRN will always remain the same.

Anatomy of a GRN

A GRN is comprised of three components: type, id, and alias, separated by :

type:id:alias

type identifies the resource type
- dsb: dashboard
- m: model
- palette: color palette
- sv: saved exploration
id is an globally unique identifier first assigned when the resource is created. The ID appears in the URL bar when viewing a resource.
alias is an optional unique identifier set by the user in the resource's DataOps config.

Not all 3 components are necessary to specify a GRN. The alias can be omitted as long as an id is present:

type:id

and, likewise, the id can be omitted as long as an alias is specified (note the double ::):

type::alias

The following are all valid GRNs:

sv:6yYdOIMG9hCAAHqB
m:RNuzTq-85qzAFKJ8:2018_sales
dsb:SV9nqwUHWmyk1zka
dsb::daily_active_users
 
# some GRNs have longer IDs:
sv:a7905ae1-7f07-4c99-b9a5-930f409736a8
m:5948db01-0097-46fb-aec8-f68b1f09332d
dsb:658f8c83-c269-405c-ace6-677eece4c218:customers

GRNs are case sensitive.

Using GRNs

Linking existing resources to DataOps

All resources can be specified with the special grn property to link a DataOps config to an existing resource. This allows you to move a resource created in the Glean web app into DataOps, without recreating it.

Referencing other resources

Anywhere you specify a filepath in a DataOps config, you may instead specify a GRN. This allows you to reference resources independently of how you structure your files.

Referencing dbt models

When referencing models imported by the dbt integration, the standard GRN format is valid. It is also possible to reference dbt models using the unique identifier of the dbt node representing the model:

dbt::dbtuniqueid

For example:

dbt::model.jaffle_shop.orders

Using the YAML Editor Data Models