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dbt & Analytics Engineering

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Analytics Engineering

  • What is analytics engineering?12m
  • dbt project structure12m
  • Jinja basics14m

What dbt Is

  • What dbt is12m
  • source() and ref() as compiled names12m

Staging

  • Staging models14m
  • not_null tests as SQL12m

unique and relationships

  • unique tests12m
  • relationships tests14m

Marts and Incremental

  • Marts from staging CTEs14m
  • Incremental vs full refresh12m
  • Views, tables, incrementals10m

Capstone

  • Capstone: staging, mart, test16m
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  1. Learn
  2. dbt & Analytics Engineering
  3. Marts and Incremental
  4. Incremental vs full refresh

Lesson 11 of 13 · Case study

Incremental vs full refresh

dbtsqlintermediate12 min

Overview

is_incremental() becomes a WHERE on a high-watermark column. You write that filter. dbt's merge wrapper is still the CLI.

Module: Marts and Incremental

This section walks through the idea with a short example, then the trade-offs you should mention in an interview.

In practice you start from the raw rows, apply the transform step by step, and check the shape of the result before you move on.

A common mistake is to jump straight to the final query without naming the grain or the join keys that keep the result correct.

Once the core path works, you harden it for nulls, duplicates, and late data so the pipeline stays reliable under load.

The Pro write-up covers the full explanation, worked examples, and the code you can run in the studio.

# Locked example
result = transform(frame)
print(result.head())

This lesson requires Pro

This lesson is part of Marts and Incremental. Pro opens the full lesson and the exercises.

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