Merge Queries and Content Validator

[Dawid]

Sometimes it is necessary to change the name or a location of an explore and usually Content Validator is powerful enough to change the content to point to the right place, step by step. 

Lately, however, I have been having problems with Dashboard Tiles that contain Merge Queries. 

This is usually my process:

1. Let’s say I want to remove an explore and move it as a JOIN to a main entity explore
2. I comment it ou
3. I run the Content Validator
4. I make a copy of a Dashboard/Look and work on it to get it to work

Then I repeat this process once the change goes live. I think the merge queries didn’t even show up in Content Validator at first, though it could be that I just didn’t notice. 

The problem was that a Merge Query can be build from different models but when we get an error “unknown field/explore/model” it feels like the Content Validator changes models for all queries. Basically I ended up in an endless loop changing models and explores back and forth, trying to get it to work. I even tried changing it in JSON and using API calls to make changes. Eventually I had to give up.

Has anybody had any experience with Content Validator and Merge Queries? How should we approach modelling changes? I have been successful in making some complicated changes and then working with Content Validator to fix Dashboards, Looks, and Tiles. Merge Queries seem to be a different class 😄