[ADAP-702] [Feature] Allow user to specify location directly (instead of concatenating location_root and alias)

[timvw]

Is this your first time submitting a feature request?

• I have read the expectations for open source contributors
• I have searched the existing issues, and I could not find an existing issue for this feature
• I am requesting a straightforward extension of existing dbt-spark functionality, rather than a Big Idea better suited to a discussion

Describe the feature

Currently we have a location_clause macro in place which calculates the location where the data should be stored as {{ location_root }}/{{ identifier }}.

It would be nice to be able to specify location directly (independent of location_root and identifier).
Eg: we have naming conventions where the tables are name blah_blah and locations are s3://bucket/blah-blah.

Describe alternatives you've considered

We could not implement this and push this to user-space

Who will this benefit?

Anyone that wants to specify a location that is not the result of concatenating location_root and identifier.

Are you interested in contributing this feature?

Yes

Anything else?

[dbeatty10]

Thanks for raising this idea @timvw 💡 !

Would you be willing to share the code for your location_clause macro in addition to examples using it? And also an example of how you are proposing to specify the location directly instead?

That way, we can take a look at your proposal vs. the alternative you are using currently.

[timvw]

The existing implementation of location_clause and the difference with my proposal can be found here: https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-spark/pull/835/files

Usage is straightforward, simply add a location parameter to your model config:

models:
  - name: model_a
    config:
      format: delta
      location: 's3://bucket/sourcesystem/conformed/model-a'
...

Without this feature we would be forced to rename our model to model-a..

[dbeatty10]

Thanks for this example and explanation @timvw !

What do you think @dataders? Do you see this as tying into https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core/discussions/8617 at all?

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