What is dbt - Hands-On Activity

What is dbt

📖 Scenario: Imagine you work in a team that manages data for a company. You want to make sure the data is clean, organized, and easy to use for reports and analysis.

🎯 Goal: Learn what dbt is and how it helps transform raw data into useful information by writing simple code.

📋 What You'll Learn

Understand the basic purpose of dbt

Create a simple dbt model file

Configure a dbt project variable

Write a SQL select statement inside a dbt model

Display the transformed data output

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Companies use dbt to automate and document their data transformations, making data reliable and easy to analyze.

💼 Career

Data analysts and engineers use dbt to build and maintain data pipelines that power business decisions.

1

Create a simple dbt model file

Create a dbt model file named my_first_model.sql with a SQL query that selects all columns from a table called raw_data.

dbt

-- Write a SQL select statement in my_first_model.sql
-- Your code here

Need a hint?

dbt models are just SQL files with select statements.

2

Add a configuration variable

In the same my_first_model.sql file, add a dbt config block at the top to set materialized='table'.

dbt

{{ config(materialized='table') }}
select * from raw_data
-- Your code here

Need a hint?

Use {{ config(materialized='table') }} at the top of your model file.

3

Write core transformation logic

Modify the SQL query in my_first_model.sql to select only the id and value columns from raw_data where value is greater than 10.

dbt

{{ config(materialized='table') }}
-- Select id and value where value > 10
select id, value from raw_data where value > 10
-- Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a where clause to filter rows.

4

Display the transformed data output

Print the final SQL query from my_first_model.sql to show the transformed data selection.

dbt

print("{{ config(materialized='table') }}\nselect id, value from raw_data where value > 10")
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a print statement to show the SQL code.