Building on the shoulders of giants – dbt packages

We have been writing our models and macros using only the base dbt functionality. In this section, we will see some existing libraries, called packages in dbt, and how we can import them to increase our productivity.

Using only dbt or Java or Python standard functionalities, you can build everything that you need. Doing everything by yourself does not pose an absolute limitation, but in all languages, the availability of libraries, collections of well-tested code to do frequent or complex tasks that you can easily download and use to accomplish complex tasks, has greatly augmented the productivity of programmers and their ability to solve more complex problems.

Using libraries, you can concentrate on the core of your problem and rely on a lot of other smart people’s knowledge and experience to reduce the complexity of your project, saving a lot of time.

You can reuse the code written by experts in areas that...