dbt-transformation-patterns

name	dbt-transformation-patterns
description	Master dbt (data build tool) for analytics engineering with model organization, testing, documentation, and incremental strategies. Use when building data transformations, creating data models, or implementing analytics engineering best practices.

dbt Transformation Patterns

Production-ready patterns for dbt (data build tool) including model organization, testing strategies, documentation, and incremental processing.

When to Use This Skill

• Building data transformation pipelines with dbt
• Organizing models into staging, intermediate, and marts layers
• Implementing data quality tests
• Creating incremental models for large datasets
• Documenting data models and lineage
• Setting up dbt project structure

Core Concepts

1. Model Layers (Medallion Architecture)

sources/          Raw data definitions
    ↓
staging/          1:1 with source, light cleaning
    ↓
intermediate/     Business logic, joins, aggregations
    ↓
marts/            Final analytics tables

2. Naming Conventions

Layer	Prefix	Example
Staging	stg_	stg_stripe__payments
Intermediate	int_	int_payments_pivoted
Marts	dim_, fct_	dim_customers, fct_orders

Quick Start

# dbt_project.yml
name: "analytics"
version: "1.0.0"
profile: "analytics"

model-paths: ["models"]
analysis-paths: ["analyses"]
test-paths: ["tests"]
seed-paths: ["seeds"]
macro-paths: ["macros"]

vars:
  start_date: "2020-01-01"

models:
  analytics:
    staging:
      +materialized: view
      +schema: staging
    intermediate:
      +materialized: ephemeral
    marts:
      +materialized: table
      +schema: analytics

# Project structure
models/
├── staging/
│   ├── stripe/
│   │   ├── _stripe__sources.yml
│   │   ├── _stripe__models.yml
│   │   ├── stg_stripe__customers.sql
│   │   └── stg_stripe__payments.sql
│   └── shopify/
│       ├── _shopify__sources.yml
│       └── stg_shopify__orders.sql
├── intermediate/
│   └── finance/
│       └── int_payments_pivoted.sql
└── marts/
    ├── core/
    │   ├── _core__models.yml
    │   ├── dim_customers.sql
    │   └── fct_orders.sql
    └── finance/
        └── fct_revenue.sql

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

Best Practices

Do's

• Use staging layer - Clean data once, use everywhere
• Test aggressively - Not null, unique, relationships
• Document everything - Column descriptions, model descriptions
• Use incremental - For tables > 1M rows
• Version control - dbt project in Git

Don'ts

• Don't skip staging - Raw → mart is tech debt
• Don't hardcode dates - Use {{ var('start_date') }}
• Don't repeat logic - Extract to macros
• Don't test in prod - Use dev target
• Don't ignore freshness - Monitor source data