Whats the story of dbt?
Well it all began when a few data practitioners got together
Between them, they had many years’ experience in the data consultancy business and it was clear that the industry had a severe lack of data engineering resources
Meaning, in short, that there simply weren’t enough people who were able transform data from all its different sources so that it could be analyzed and used effectively
The data engineers that did exist, had to spend an awful lot of their time working on infrastructure and troubleshooting, rather than focussing on the work that could have real impact on the business
So they created dbt!
A framework that enables not only data engineers, but also much less technical people, to transform data. Using only SQL
Transforming not just the data, but the data world itself - freeing up valuable data engineering expertise and even creating a new job category - the so-called Analytics Engineer.
They decided to make dbt open source because of the belief that analytics infrastructure should be controlled by the users
Dbt has become the standard for transformation in the modern data stack and used by many big companies such as Hubspot, Monzo, and JetBlue, who credit dbt with having completely redesigned their entire approach to data
Well that’s certainly transformative