# DataContext, BaseDataContext, DataContextConfig, and get\_checkpoint()
**URL:** https://discourse.greatexpectations.io/t/datacontext-basedatacontext-datacontextconfig-and-get-checkpoint/315
**Category:** Archive
**Tags:** how-to, help-wanted
**Created:** [August 13, 2020, 9:02pm UTC](https://discourse.greatexpectations.io/t/datacontext-basedatacontext-datacontextconfig-and-get-checkpoint/315 "2020-08-13T21:02:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@wtbartos](https://discourse.greatexpectations.io/u/wtbartos)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2020, 9:02pm UTC](https://discourse.greatexpectations.io/t/datacontext-basedatacontext-datacontextconfig-and-get-checkpoint/315/1 "2020-08-13T21:02:10Z")
Was requested to post this here.
Hey, I made an issue ticket for something I encountered: [DataContext, BaseDataContext, DataContextConfig, and get\_checkpoint() · Issue #1795 · great-expectations/great\_expectations · GitHub](https://github.com/great-expectations/great_expectations/issues/1795).
It has to do with `DataContext` and `DataContextConfig` . Long story short, is there any way to dynamically generate a DataContext via the API (as shown in the docs [How to instantiate a Data Context on an EMR Spark cluster — great\_expectations documentation](https://docs.greatexpectations.io/en/latest/guides/how_to_guides/configuring_data_contexts/how_to_instantiate_a_data_context_on_an_emr_spark_cluster.html)) in order to run a Checkpoint? It seems that right now only yaml configs are accepted.
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### Author:  [@eugene.mandel](https://discourse.greatexpectations.io/u/eugene.mandel)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2020, 11:27pm UTC](https://discourse.greatexpectations.io/t/datacontext-basedatacontext-datacontextconfig-and-get-checkpoint/315/2 "2020-08-13T23:27:38Z")
A `BaseDataContext` that you instantiate programmatically without a configuration file (as described in the how-to guide linked in the question) indeed does not have the capability to run Checkpoints.
Since Checkpoint is a thin wrapper around [ValidationOperators](https://docs.greatexpectations.io/en/latest/reference/core_concepts/validation_operators_and_actions.html), you can run a `ValidationOperator` by invoking the context’s run\_validation\_operator method.
This folder in the repo has Jupyter notebooks that show step by step how to prepare the arguments to run a ValidationOperator: [https://github.com/great-expectations/great\_expectations/tree/develop/great\_expectations/init\_notebooks](https://github.com/great-expectations/great_expectations/tree/develop/great_expectations/init_notebooks) (there are versions for Pandas, Spark and SQLAlchemy)