How to (Re)Use dbt: Guiding Rapid MDS Deployments

The open-source tool dbt has revolutionized data modeling by enabling software engineering principles for data analysts, analytics engineers, and data engineers. Its reusability of code allows the creation of "best-practice transforms" for widely adopted data sources, leading to a library of standardized schemas and reusable code for all data teams. The three major dbt components that facilitate this reusability are packages, macros, and dependencies. Packages enable rapid extensibility by containing macros and models, allowing users to leverage work done by other data professionals within their projects. Macros leverage Jinja to create templates, enabling loops, modularization, and repetition of business logic. Dependencies are created through the ref function, which allows one model to depend on another being referenced, creating a dependent acyclic graph (DAG) of the entire data model. By leveraging these components, dbt can rapidly deploy modern data stacks for clients in days instead of months, ensuring that every company obtains the necessary data modeling to empower decision-making.