Testing Data Pipelines with dbt-expectations: A Beginner's Guide

dbt-expectations is an open-source testing library for dbt that allows users to assert expectations about their data. It enables analytics engineers and data analysts who use SQL more than Python to take advantage of the same data quality testing as data engineers and software engineers. The package uses SQL code and integrates directly into your dbt project, allowing you to test sources, models, and seeds at every layer of your data model. Key aspects of data that can be tested include row count, column count, string patterns (regex), anomalies, and datatypes. By implementing these tests, users can maintain high data quality throughout various fields and detect abnormal patterns in their data.