Introduction to the data build tool (dbt)

If you haven't used dbt, you should. While tools like Fivetran handle extraction and loading, dbt specializes in transforming data and building scalable medallion architectures. In this session, you'll learn the essentials of dbt, including project, profile, schema, and properties YAML files, plus materialization strategies such as seeds, snapshots, tables, and views.

We'll explore dbt’s portability through adapters and macros that allow models to run across platforms like Databricks and PostgreSQL while handling vendor-specific differences. You'll also see how AI tools can automate documentation and how dbt scales in practice, with real-world deployments supporting 150 TB of data and 8,000 models.

Join us to learn why dbt has become the industry standard for modern data engineering.