dbt is an SQL development environment, developed by Fishtown Analytics, now known as dbt Labs. The vendor states that with dbt, analysts take ownership of the entire analytics engineering workflow, from writing data transformation code to deployment and documentation. dbt Core is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, and paid Teams and Enterprise editions are available.
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Fivetran
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Fivetran replicates applications, databases, events and files into a high-performance data warehouse, after a five minute setup. The vendor says their standardized cloud pipelines are fully managed and zero-maintenance. The vendor says Fivetran began with a realization: For modern companies using cloud-based software and storage, traditional ETL tools badly underperformed, and the complicated configurations they required often led to project failures. To streamline and accelerate…
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Community Pulse
dbt
Fivetran
Considered Both Products
dbt
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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 …
Most ETL pipeline products have a T layer, but dbt just does it better. The transformation is on steroids compared to the others. Also, just allows much more Adhoc solutions for very specific projects. Those ETL tools are probably better on the T part if you don't need too many …
Fivetran is more intuitive and easier to use than code-based ETL/ELT tools. The data modelling Fivetran performs makes the data more usable more quickly. Fivetran's dbt support and integration is unique.
If you can load your data first into your warehouse, dbt is excellent. It does the T(ransformation) part of ELT brilliantly but does not do the E(xtract) or L(oad) part. If you know SQL or your development team knows SQL, it's a framework and extension around that. So, it's easy to learn and easy to hire people with that technical skill (as opposed to specific Informatica, SnapLogic, etc. experience). dbt uses plain text files and integrates with GitHub. You can easily see the changes made between versions. In GUI-based UIs it was always hard to tell what someone had changed. Each "model" is essentially a "SELECT" statement. You never need to do a "CREATE TABLE" or "CREATE VIEW" - it's all done for you, leaving you to work on the business logic. Instead of saying "FROM specific_db.schema.table" you indicate "FROM ref('my_other_model')". It creates an internal dependency diagram you can view in a DAG. When you deploy, the dependencies work like magic in your various environments. They also have great documentation, an active slack community, training, and support. I like the enhancements they have been making and I believe they are headed in a good direction.
Mostly Fivetran can be useful for working with risk reduction operations during agile data analysis processes. I.e., in the short term the heaviest data movement operations would be safe. If you need to create an automated infrastructure for the data, the ability to create data list transformations in SQL is useful for keeping the work integrable or with schema changes. For situations that require a lot of speed: setting up the Fivetran platform is very easy, as you only need to authenticate the sources of the data to start working, and this is excellent for covering fast storage operations.
Slow load times of the dbt cloud environment (they're working on it via a new UI though)
More out-of-the-box solutions for managing procedures, functions, etc would be nice to have, but honestly, it's pretty easy to figure out how to adapt dbt macros
It runs pretty well and gets our data from point A to point cluster quickly enough. Honestly, it's not something I think about unless it breaks and that's pretty rare.
Most ETL pipeline products have a T layer, but dbt just does it better. The transformation is on steroids compared to the others. Also, just allows much more Adhoc solutions for very specific projects. Those ETL tools are probably better on the T part if you don't need too many transforms - also dbt is pretty much free dependent on how you work it, also extremely scalable.
Fivetran came well with the connectors' availability and updates with the source changes. We had an idea on data requirements in our case which helped us to work out on cost implication and take a decision for Fivetran as a data provider for our organization. These were 2 places where Fivetran out-performed, other vendors.