Apache Subversion vs. dbt

It's a relatively simple version control system so it works great for an individual or small team (less than 10 people). But if you have a medium to large team, especially one with members distributed over a large geographic area, or one where individuals need to be able to work "offline" without access to a central server, Apache Subversion will likely not be the best choice.

Also, if you're maintaining an open-source project where outside people will be interacting with your code repository, git is probably a better choice because it's becoming the de-facto standard these days and what most developers are familiar with.

Incentivized

The prerequisite is that you have a supported database/data warehouse and have already found a way to ingest your raw data. Then dbt is very well suited to manage your transformation logic if the people using it are familiar with SQL. If you want to benefit from bringing engineering practices to data, dbt is a great fit. It can bring CI/CD practices, version control, automated testing, documentation generation, etc. It is not so well suited if the people managing the transformation logic do not like to code (in SQL) but prefer graphical user interfaces.

Incentivized

• Revision control done properly - you have end to end visibility of all changes in the project.
• Conflict resolution - visually highlighting the differences helps to track down the problem.
• Being open source and very popular.
• We are using SVN hosted in our network - it is very stable, we had almost zero downtime in 4 years.
• Rollbacks are made simple and easy to use.

Incentivized

• dbt supports version control through GIT, this allows teams to collaborate and track the data transformation logic.
• dbt allows us to build data models which helps to break complex transformation logic into simple and smaller logic.
• dbt is completely based on SQL which allows data analyst and data engineers to build the transformation logic.
• dbt can be easily integrated with snowflake.

Incentivized

• Distributed development - I've never worked in an environment where distributed development (developers widely scattered geographically) was a factor, but that's why git exists.
• Merging - Merging of code from one branch to another can be painful, especially if it's not done frequently. (On the other hand, doing merges is one of the reasons I get a nice salary, so I can't complain too much!)
• Acceptance - Let's face it, git is what "all the cool kids are using." If you've got a bunch of developers fresh out of school, they'll probably know git and not Subversion.

Incentivized

• Field-level lineage (currently at table level)
• Documentation inheritance - if a field is documented the downstream field of the same name could inherit the doc info
• Adding python model support (in beta now)

Incentivized

While there are interesting alternatives, such a GIT, Subversion has been a breath of fresh air compared to its predecessors like CVS or Microsoft Source Safe (now called Team Foundation Server). Its ease of use and high adoption rate is going to keep me using this product for years to come.

dbt is very easy to use. Basically if you can write SQL, you will be able to use dbt to get what you need done. Of course more advanced users with more technical skills can do more things.

Incentivized

Git has become the new standard of version control, with its support for distributed design. As a tool to manage and control versions, Subversion does it well, but Git is the future.

Incentivized

I actually don't know what the alternative to dbt is. I'm sure one must exist other than more 'roll your own' options like Apache Airflow, say, bu tin terms of super easy managed/cloud data transforms, dbt really does seem to be THE tool to use. It's $50/month per dev, BUT there's a FREE version for 1 dev seat with no read-only access for anyone else, so you can always start with that and then buy yourself a seat later.

Incentivized

• Subversion helps us feel secure in maintaining access to all of our product code, both current and historical.
• Being free and open source makes it an even better "investment".

Incentivized

• Simplified our BI layer for faster load times
• Increased the quality of data reaching our end users
• Makes complex transformations manageable

Incentivized