Materialization

Materialization	Description	Pros	Cons
View	Model is rebuilt as a view on each run	No additional data is stored Views always have the latest records in them	Views with significant transformations or stacked views can be slow to query
Table	Model is rebuilt as a table on each run	Tables are fast to query	Tables can take a long time to rebuild, especially for complex transformations New records in source data are not automatically added
Incremental	Allows insertion or update of records into a table since the last run	Significantly reduces build time by transforming only new records	Complexity and additional configuration required
Ephemeral	Not built into the database; code is interpolated into dependent models as a common table expression (CTE)	Reusable logic can still be written	Cannot select directly from ephemeral models Operations and macros cannot reference ephemeral nodes Queries may be harder to debug

🔑 Golden Rule of Materializations Start with models as views, when they take too long to query, make them tables, when the tables take too long to build, make them incremental.

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