dbt: A Software Engineering Approach to the Analytics Workflow

Room Qu4a

Tuesday, April 11th 2023
11:30 AM—12:30 PM EST

In this talk, we’ll present dbt, an open-source data transformation framework that lets analysts and engineers collaborate using their shared knowledge of SQL.

We’ll dive deep into the analyst persona and how dbt empowers them to produce data that their entire organization can trust independently of software engineers.

We’ll explore how dbt embraces software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation to help analytics teams ship as effectively as software teams.

Using a fictional e-commerce store as an example, we’ll also illustrate how a transformation written in dbt is simpler and cleaner than its Python equivalent.

We’ll then look at how dbt serves as the nexus for analytics workflows at Spotify.
We’ll explore what Spotify’s tech stack used to look like, why they adopted dbt, and what the dbt experience looks like for different stakeholders within the organization.

Finally, we’ll cover what’s on dbt’s roadmap – power user tools like multi-project deployments and a Python SDK – built for software engineers.