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When your data model includes many schemas – or a few very large ones – it can slow down performance. Offloading, or lazy loading, helps by deferring the loading of schema metadata until you need it. This approach is especially useful when working with dbt virtual schemas or other large, infrequently accessed schemas. Offloading keeps your model lean and responsive while still allowing full access to schema metadata on demand.
While offloaded schemas won’t be visible in the model IDE or workbook, they’re still easily accessible. Refer to the Accessing offloaded schemas section for more information.

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Specifying offloaded schemas

Connection Admin permissions are required to modify connection settings.
1

Open the connection details

  1. Navigate to Settings > Connections.
  2. Click a connection.
  3. Locate the Offloaded schemas setting in the connection settings.
2

Add the schemas

In the Offloaded schemas setting, use a comma-separated list to add the names of the schemas you want to offload. The values in this field:
  • Can use wildcard syntax, for example dbt_*.
  • Are case-sensitive, meaning the schema name you enter must exactly match the name of the schema in the database. For example, blob_schema must match a blob_schema in the database.
If the schema is in a database other than the connection default, you need to:
  1. Include the database in the connection’s Other databases setting. This name varies by database type. For example, this setting is named Include Other Data Catalogs for an Amazon Athena connection.
  2. Specify the database when adding the schema to Offloaded Schemas. For example, NON_DEFAULT_DATABASE.OFFLOADED_SCHEMA.
3

Save & apply the changes

  1. When finished, click Update and Test connection.
  2. Trigger a schema refresh to apply the changes to your Omni model.
4

Confirm the changes

While the changes may not be visible in the connection’s shared models, you can verify that the application was successful using the model IDE:
  1. Click Develop in the left navigation panel.
  2. Click one of the connection’s models to open it in the model IDE.
  3. In the Shared layer of the model, click the link next to Parent at the bottom of the page. This opens the schema model. Highlighted Parent section in the model IDE
  4. In this view, change the Browse mode to Model by using the dropdown near the top left corner of the page: Browse selector in the model IDE, set to Model
  5. The offloaded schemas should not be visible in the Schemas section.

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Accessing offloaded schemas in workbooks

Once set up successfully, offloaded schemas will not display in the All Views & Fields view of the workbook’s field browser, but you can still access them when needed. To access offloaded schemas in the workbook, click the Schema button in the All views & fields view. For example, we offloaded the offloaded_schema, which is visible in the Schema dropdown: Workbook schema picker showing included and offloaded schemas Select the schema, at which point Omni will activate and load it.