Cross-team model sharing in dbt - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Cross-team model sharing

📖 Scenario: Your company has multiple teams working on different parts of the data pipeline. Each team builds dbt models for their area. Now, you want to share a model from one team with another team so they can use it in their analysis.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to share a dbt model across teams by creating a model in one project and referencing it in another project.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dbt model in the source project

Configure the source project to expose the model

Reference the shared model in the target project

Run dbt to build and verify the shared model

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

In many companies, different teams build parts of the data pipeline. Sharing dbt models allows teams to reuse work and maintain consistency.

💼 Career

Data engineers and analysts often collaborate using dbt. Knowing how to share models across teams is a valuable skill for maintaining scalable data workflows.

1

Create a dbt model in the source project

In the source dbt project, create a model file called source_team_model.sql inside the models folder. Write a simple SQL query that selects id and name columns from the raw.customers table.

dbt

-- Your code here to create source_team_model.sql with the SQL query

Need a hint?

Write a simple SELECT statement in source_team_model.sql that selects id and name from raw.customers.

2

Configure the source project to expose the model

In the source dbt project's dbt_project.yml file, add the model source_team_model under the models section and set enabled: true and materialized: view to make it available for sharing.

dbt

select id, name from raw.customers

# Add model configuration in dbt_project.yml to enable and materialize source_team_model as a view
# Your code here

Need a hint?

In dbt_project.yml, under models:, add source_team_model: with enabled: true and materialized: view.

3

Reference the shared model in the target project

In the target dbt project, create a model file called target_team_model.sql inside the models folder. Use the ref function to reference the source_team_model from the source project and select all columns from it.

dbt

-- Your code here to create target_team_model.sql referencing source_team_model using ref()

Need a hint?

In target_team_model.sql, write select * from {{ ref('source_team_model') }} to use the shared model.

4

Run dbt to build and verify the shared model

Run the command dbt run in the target project to build the models. Then run dbt test to verify the models run successfully. Finally, print the message "Shared model built successfully".

dbt

# Your code here to print success message

Need a hint?

After running dbt commands, print "Shared model built successfully" to confirm.