dbt Best Practices

Project Structure

Layer Organization (CRITICAL)

• Staging: 1:1 with source tables (stg_{source}__{entity})
• Intermediate: Business logic composition (int_{entity}_{verb})
• Marts: Final consumption models (fct_{entity}, dim_{entity})

Materialization Strategy

• Staging: view (lightweight, always fresh)
• Intermediate: ephemeral or view
• Marts: table or incremental

Modeling Patterns

Naming Conventions

• Staging: stg_source__table
• Intermediate: int_entity_verb
• Facts: fct_entity
• Dimensions: dim_entity

Incremental Models

• Use is_incremental() macro
• Define unique_key for merge strategy
• Choose strategy: append, merge, delete+insert

Testing

Schema Tests

• unique, not_null for primary keys
• relationships for foreign keys
• accepted_values for enums
• Custom data tests

Source Freshness

• Configure loaded_at_field
• Set freshness thresholds

Documentation

• Add descriptions to models
• Document column definitions
• Use doc blocks for reusable text
• Generate and host dbt docs

Version

• dbt-core: 1.11+ (includes Fusion engine for faster parallel model execution)
• Fusion engine is enabled by default in dbt-core 1.11 — no configuration required

References

• dbt Best Practices