I would think that's a general problem with BigQuery and would have to be addressed everywhere you cast a column, not just in this macro? The other obvious "fix" is to not have columns with the same name as a table?

I said as much in the linked PR, but to follow up on @clausherther's comment above: a good approach to address this issue on BQ might be to alias the table name instead of changing the source table/column names. I do wish that BigQuery was a little bit smarter here.... alas.

So, this works:

with data as (
  select 1 as data
)

select cast(data.data as string) from data;

and this also works:

with data as (
  select 1 as data
)

select cast(data as string) from data as data______dbt_generated______;

but this does not:

with data as (
  select 1 as data
)

select cast(data as string) from data;
--> Invalid cast from STRUCT<data INT64> to STRING at [7:13]

All things considered, I think i like the table alias more that the column qualification. It can be really challenging to get quoting/capitalization exactly right on different databases in different contexts. I think it's straightforward here (nice work on that fix @wearpants) but it other contexts, it may be preferable to alias tables instead.

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Hi @drewbanin, I also face this issue in my development with BigQuery, please help me to review the changes if it's make sense to you.
Thanks!