buildable indirect selection mode

[dbeatty10]

Contributions

• I am a PM or subject matter expert at dbt who is responsible for this feature.

Where does this content belong?

https://docs.getdbt.com/reference/node-selection/test-selection-examples#indirect-selection

Link to source material

Links

• [CT-1590] [Feature] Improving dbt selection options dbt-core#6365
• Adds 'buildable' selection mode dbt-core#6366

Who will use this feature?

The intended audience is an analytics engineer iteratively developing a subset of the DAG, likely modifying pre-existing models.

Feature description how it will help people

"This will benefit developers who are testing changes on a subset of the graph, rather than building the entire graph."
The author's organization typically has tests that compare models with their dependencies. e.g. confirm that the transactions add up to the same amount -- if they differ, that would be bad! During development, the'd want to run the minimal number of nodes to check that things are working rather than running the entire DAG.

Customer feedback and research

Community member @AGPapa recognized the need and opened a pull request with a solution 💪 @MichelleArk has dealt with similarly complex and specialized selection criteria with a large DAG shared over multiple teams.

How can we test or use this feature?

1. Create model model_a (probably as a seed file)
2. Create model model_b that depends only on model_a
3. Create model model_c that depends only on model_b
4. Create test test_ab that depends on model_a and model_b
5. Create test test_cb that depends on model_c and model_b

To compare the 3 modes:

dbt test --select model_b --indirect-selection=buildable
dbt test --select model_b --indirect-selection=cautious
dbt test --select model_b --indirect-selection=eager

Screenshot

Example of which modes will select each multi-parent test:

🚧 How could the existing page be improved?

A few things within this section:

1. There is no stand-alone example for indirect_selection: cautious in a yaml selector
2. The indirect selection section is verbose, but some of us aren't good at reading long text (this guy!) 😬
3. $ dbt test --select customers orders is included, but not explained