Quick start

Get from nothing to a governed, versioned data model in about ten minutes. You need VS Code 1.90 or newer and Node.js (only for the terminal commands and local embeddings).

1. Install#

Strata SQL is not on the VS Code Marketplace yet. Today you run it from source:

cd strata-sql        # the Strata SQL repository
npm install          # once: the SQL parser and local embeddings

Then open the folder in VS Code and press F5. A second VS Code window opens with the extension loaded.

To install it into your everyday VS Code instead, build and install the package:

npm run install-ext  # builds strata-<version>.vsix and installs it
npm run uninstall-ext

Once it is published, the install is code --install-extension <publisher>.strata.

2. Create a project or open a sample#

Open the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P) and run Strata SQL: New Project. Answer four questions:

1. Folder: your workspace folder (press Enter).
2. Name: for example Sales Warehouse.
3. Starting point: Blank, a template (Northwind, FpML, Dimensional star), From a dbt project…, or From DDL / SQL scripts….
4. Create project.

Nothing is ever overwritten. To explore first, run Strata SQL: Open Sample Model and pick Northwind (retail) or FpML (banking).

The same from a terminal:

strata-sql init --name "Sales Warehouse" --template star --dir ./sales
cd sales && strata-sql live     # open the project in your browser

From a source checkout, npm link puts strata-sql on your PATH. See From a terminal.

3. Add structure#

• The + menu in the toolbar adds a catalog, schema, table, view or relationship.
• Click + Add column at the bottom of a table card. Choose a data type for your database, tick Primary key, Non null or Unique, add a description.
• Drag from a column row onto another column to create a foreign key with 1..M cardinality.

4. Tag and govern#

• The tag icon creates tags such as Personal Data.
• The Governance tab (first level button) creates policies such as GDPR and attaches them. A tag can bring policies with it.
• Open any object and expand Security and governance to set its classification, owner and steward.

See Governance.

5. Optional: the business view and metrics#

• Alignment (stacked-layers icon) → Generate logical and conceptual levels builds entities and concepts from your tables. See Levels and alignment.
• Switch to the Semantic level and add a metric, for example Revenue = SUM(order_details.unit_price * order_details.quantity). See Semantic layer.

6. Save and commit#

Cmd/Ctrl + S saves the model and its version log together. Every change is already recorded in the history (Cmd/Ctrl + Y). Commit the files with Git as usual; see Versions and Git for what to commit.

7. Find your way#

More in Shortcuts.

Already have dbt or SQL?#

Skip the blank page:

• Import from dbt: tables, columns, keys, relationships, lineage and metrics from target/manifest.json.
• Import from SQL scripts: tables, keys and relationships from your DDL, metrics from your queries.

Next steps#

• Projects and files: what Strata SQL writes to disk.
• Impact and load order: what breaks if I change this, and what loads first.
• Share and AI: browser live view, HTML export, ETL code and embeddings for AI assistants.