CodersSecret

Course guide

dbt Course for Beginners: Models, Tests, and Marts

Learn dbt fundamentals through staging models, intermediate models, facts, dimensions, tests, documentation, and production analytics workflows.

dbt helps data teams build transformations as SQL models with dependencies, tests, documentation, and deployment workflows. This course teaches dbt as a production engineering habit: clear grain, safe refs, tested assumptions, and maintainable marts.

What You Will Learn

You will learn sources, refs, DAGs, staging models, intermediate models, marts, tests, freshness checks, incremental models, and CI/CD review practices.

Learning path

Continue from concept to implementation

These course modules place this topic in context, connect it to adjacent decisions, and provide the practical next step.

Module 2

Tables, Grain, and Why Dashboards Lie

Learn the most important beginner concept: one row per what?

90 minutes | 3 learning objectives

Module 3

The dbt Mental Model

Understand sources, refs, models, DAGs, and materializations without setup friction.

90 minutes | 3 learning objectives

Module 4

Staging Models

Clean source data gently: rename, cast, standardize, and expose a stable base layer.

100 minutes | 3 learning objectives

Practical outcomes

What the recommended module teaches

  • Explain how dbt compiles SQL models
  • Read a dbt DAG as a dependency graph
  • Know when a model should be a view, table, or incremental model