Explore your dbt projects

With dbt Explorer, you can view your project's resources (such as models, tests, and metrics) and their lineage to gain a better understanding of its latest production state. Navigate and manage your projects within dbt Cloud to help you and other data developers, analysts, and consumers discover and leverage your dbt resources.

Public preview

Try dbt Explorer! It's available in Public Preview as of October 17, 2023 for dbt Cloud customers. More updates coming soon.

Prerequisites

• You have a multi-tenant or AWS single-tenant dbt Cloud account on the Team or Enterprise plan.
• You have set up a production deployment environment for each project you want to explore.
  • There has been at least one successful job run in the production deployment environment.
• You are on the dbt Explorer page. To do this, select Explore from the top navigation bar in dbt Cloud.

Generate metadata

dbt Explorer uses the metadata provided by the Discovery API to display the details about the state of your project. The metadata that's available depends on the deployment environment you've designated as production in your dbt Cloud project. dbt Explorer automatically retrieves the metadata updates after each job run in the production deployment environment so it always has the latest results for your project.

To view a resource and its metadata, you must define the resource in your project and run a job in the production environment. The resulting metadata depends on the commands executed by the jobs.

For a richer experience with dbt Explorer, you must:

• Run dbt run or dbt build on a given model within a job in the environment to update model details or results.
• Run dbt docs generate within a job in the environment to view catalog statistics and columns for models, sources, and snapshots.
• Run dbt test or dbt build within a job in the environment to view test results.
• Run dbt source freshness within a job in the environment to view source freshness data.
• Run dbt snapshot or dbt build within a job in the environment to view snapshot details.

Richer and more timely metadata will become available as dbt, the Discovery API, and the underlying dbt Cloud platform evolves.

Explore your project's lineage graph

dbt Explorer provides a visualization of your project’s DAG that you can interact with. To access the project's full lineage graph, select Overview in the left sidebar and click the Explore Lineage button on the main (center) section of the page.

If you don't see the project lineage graph immediately, click Render Lineage. It can take some time for the graph to render depending on the size of your project and your computer’s available memory. The graph of very large projects might not render so you can select a subset of nodes by using selectors, instead.

The nodes in the lineage graph represent the project’s resources and the edges represent the relationships between the nodes. Nodes are color-coded and include iconography according to their resource type.

To explore the lineage graphs of tests and macros, view their resource details pages. By default, dbt Explorer excludes these resources from the full lineage graph unless a search query returns them as results.

To interact with the full lineage graph, you can:

• Hover over any item in the graph to display the resource’s name and type.

• Zoom in and out on the graph by mouse-scrolling.

• Grab and move the graph and the nodes.

• Select a resource to highlight its relationship with other resources in your project. A panel opens on the graph’s right-hand side that displays a high-level summary of the resource’s details. The side panel includes a General tab for information like description, materialized type, and other details.

  • Click the Share icon in the side panel to copy the graph’s link to your clipboard.
  • Click the View Resource icon in the side panel to view the resource details.

• Search and select specific resources or a subset of the DAG using selectors and graph operators. For example:

  • +[RESOURCE_NAME] — Displays all parent nodes of the resource
  • resource_type:model [RESOURCE_NAME] — Displays all models matching the name search

• View resource details by selecting a node (double-clicking) in the graph.

• Click the List view icon in the graph's upper right corner to return to the main Explore page.

Search for resources

With the search bar (on the upper left corner of the page or in a lineage graph), you can search with keywords or by using node selection syntax. The resources that match your search criteria will display as a lineage graph and a table in the main section of the page.

Select a node (single-click) in the lineage graph to highlight its relationship with your other search results and to display which project contains the resource's definition. When you choose a node (double-click) in the lineage graph or when you select a resource in the table, dbt Explorer displays the resource's details page.

Search with keywords

When searching with keywords, dbt Explorer searches through your resource metadata (such as resource type, resource name, column name, source name, tags, schema, database, version, alias/identifier, and package name) and returns any matches.

Search with selector methods

You can search with selector methods. Below are the selectors currently available in dbt Explorer:

• fqn: — Find resources by file or fully qualified name. This selector is the search bar's default. If you want to use the default, it's unnecessary to add fqn: before the search term.
• source: — Find resources by a specified source.
• resource_type: — Find resources by their type.
• package: — Find resources by the dbt package that defines them.
• tag: — Find resources by a specified tag.

Search with graph operators

You can use graph operators on keywords or selector methods. For example, +orders returns all the parents of orders.

Search with set operators

You can use multiple selector methods in your search query with set operators. A space implies a union set operator and a comma for an intersection. For example:

• resource_type:metric,tag:nightly — Returns metrics with the tag nightly
• +snowplow_sessions +fct_orders — Returns resources that are parent nodes of either snowplow_sessions or fct_orders

Search with both keywords and selector methods

You can use keyword search to highlight results that are filtered by the selector search. For example, if you don't have a resource called customers, then resource_type:metric customers returns all the metrics in your project and highlights those that are related to the term customers in the name, in a column, tagged as customers, and so on.

When searching in this way, the selectors behave as filters that you can use to narrow the search and keywords as a way to find matches within those filtered results.

Browse with the sidebar

By default, the catalog sidebar lists all your project’s resources. Select any resource type in the list and all those resources in the project will display as a table in the main section of the page. For a description on the different resource types (like models, metrics, and so on), refer to About dbt projects.

To browse using a different view, you can choose one of these options from the View by dropdown:

• Resources (default) — All resources in the project organized by type.
• Packages — All resources in the project organized by the dbt package in which they are defined.
• File Tree — All resources in the project organized by the file in which they are defined. This mirrors the file tree in your dbt project repository.
• Database — All resources in the project organized by the database and schema in which they are built. This mirrors your data platform's structure that represents the applied state of your project.

View model versions

If models in the project are versioned, you can see which version of the model is being applied — prerelease, latest, and old — in the title of the model’s details page and in the model list from the sidebar.

View resource details

You can view the definition and latest run results of any resource in your project. To find a resource and view its details, you can interact with the lineage graph, use search, or browse the catalog.

The details (metadata) available to you depends on the resource’s type, its definition, and the commands that run within jobs in the production environment.

Example of model details

An example of the details you might get for a model:

• Status bar (below the page title) — Information on the last time the model ran, whether the run was successful, how the data is materialized, number of rows, and the size of the model.
• General tab includes:
  • Lineage graph — The model’s lineage graph that you can interact with. The graph includes one parent node and one child node from the model. Click the Expand icon in the graph's upper right corner to view the model in full lineage graph mode.
  • Description section — A description of the model.
  • Recent section — Information on the last time the model ran, how long it ran for, whether the run was successful, the job ID, and the run ID.
  • Tests section — Tests for the model.
  • Details section — Key properties like the model’s relation name (for example, how it’s represented and how you can query it in the data platform: database.schema.identifier); model governance attributes like access, group, and if contracted; and more.
  • Relationships section — The nodes the model Depends On, is Referenced by, and (if applicable) is Used by for projects that have declared the models' project as a dependency.
• Code tab — The source code and compiled code for the model.
• Columns tab — The available columns in the model. This tab also shows tests results (if any) that you can select to view the test's details page. A ✅ denotes a passing test.

Example of exposure details

An example of the details you might get for an exposure:

• Status bar (below the page title) — Information on the last time the exposure was updated.
• General tab includes:
  • Status section — The status on data freshness and data quality.
  • Lineage graph — The exposure’s lineage graph. Click the Expand icon in the graph's upper right corner to view the exposure in full lineage graph mode.
  • Description section — A description of the exposure.
  • Details section — Details like exposure type, maturity, owner information, and more.
  • Relationships section — The nodes the exposure Depends On.

Example of test details

An example of the details you might get for a test:

• Status bar (below the page title) — Information on the last time the test ran, whether the test passed, test name, test target, and column name.
• General tab includes:
  • Lineage graph — The test’s lineage graph that you can interact with. The graph includes one parent node and one child node from the test resource. Click the Expand icon in the graph's upper right corner to view the test in full lineage graph mode.
  • Description section — A description of the test.
  • Recent section — Information on the last time the test ran, how long it ran for, whether the test passed, the job ID, and the run ID.
  • Details section — Details like schema, severity, package, and more.
  • Relationships section — The nodes the test Depends On.
• Code tab — The source code and compiled code for the test.

Example of source details

An example of the details you might get for each source table within a source collection:

• Status bar (below the page title) — Information on the last time the source was updated and the number of tables the source uses.
• General tab includes:
  • Lineage graph — The source’s lineage graph that you can interact with. The graph includes one parent node and one child node from the source. Click the Expand icon in the graph's upper right corner to view the source in full lineage graph mode.
  • Description section — A description of the source.
  • Source freshness section — Information on whether refreshing the data was successful, the last time the source was loaded, the timestamp of when a run generated data, and the run ID.
  • Details section — Details like database, schema, and more.
  • Relationships section — A table that lists all the sources used with their freshness status, the timestamp of when freshness was last checked, and the timestamp of when the source was last loaded.
• Columns tab — The available columns in the source. This tab also shows tests results (if any) that you can select to view the test's details page. A ✅ denotes a passing test.

About project-level lineage

You can also view all the different projects and public models in the account, where the public models are defined, and how they are used to gain a better understanding about your cross-project resources.

When viewing the resource-level lineage graph for a given project that uses cross-project references, you can see cross-project relationships represented in the DAG. The iconography is slightly different depending on whether you're viewing the lineage of an upstream producer project or a downstream consumer project.

When viewing an upstream (parent) project that produces public models that are imported by downstream (child) projects, public models will have a counter icon in their upper right corner that indicates the number of projects that declare the current project as a dependency. Selecting that model reveals the lineage to show the specific projects that are dependent on this model. Projects show up in this counter if they declare the parent project as a dependency in its dependencies.yml regardless of whether or not there's a direct {{ ref() }} against the public model. Selecting a project node from a public model opens the resource-level lineage graph for that project, which is subject to your permissions.

Cross-project lineage in a parent project

When viewing a downstream (child) project that imports and refs public models from upstream (parent) projects, public models will show up in the lineage graph and display an icon on the graph edge that indicates what the relationship is to a model from another project. Hovering over this icon indicates the specific dbt Cloud project that produces that model. Double-clicking on a model from another project opens the resource-level lineage graph of the parent project, which is subject to your permissions.

Cross-project lineage in a child project

Explore the project-level lineage graph

For cross-project collaboration, you can interact with the DAG in all the same ways as described in Explore your project's lineage but you can also interact with it at the project level and view the details.

To get a list view of all the projects, select the account name at the top of the Explore page near the navigation bar. This view includes a public model list, project list, and a search bar for project searches. You can also view the project-level lineage graph by clicking the Lineage view icon in the page's upper right corner.

If you have permissions for a project in the account, you can view all public models used across the entire account. However, you can only view full public model details and private models if you have permissions for a project where the models are defined.

From the project-level lineage graph, you can:

• Click the Lineage view icon (in the graph’s upper right corner) to view the cross-project lineage graph.
• Click the List view icon (in the graph’s upper right corner) to view the project list.
  • Select a project from the Projects tab to switch to that project’s main Explore page.
  • Select a model from the Public Models tab to view the model’s details page.
  • Perform searches on your projects with the search bar.
• Select a project node in the graph (double-clicking) to switch to that particular project’s lineage graph.

When you select a project node in the graph, a project details panel opens on the graph’s right-hand side where you can:

• View counts of the resources defined in the project.
• View a list of its public models, if any.
• View a list of other projects that uses the project, if any.
• Click Open Project Lineage to switch to the project’s lineage graph.
• Click the Share icon to copy the project panel link to your clipboard so you can share the graph with someone.

Related content

• Enterprise permissions
• About model governance
• What is data mesh? blog