Enable range of database hosts to empower CI for maintainers of community packages

[dbeatty10]

Goal

As a maintainer of a community package for dbt, I want to run automated testing through a CI service so that quality assurance is automatically included in the workflow for a wide range of databases.

Solved

✅ Both GitHub Actions (GHA) and Circle CI have free plans available to cover the continuous integration (CI) piece.

Problem

❌ Compute costs. Lack of free hosts for the full range of dbt database adapters (Postgres, BigQuery, Snowflake, etc).

Options discussed thus far

1. Reimburse compute costs through an expense reporting mechanism or stipend
2. Clone these repos on instances internal to dbt Labs and execute tests
3. Enable access to database instances internal to dbt Labs for community maintainers

Primary negative trade-off for each option

1. Complicated on the finance side of things
2. Disempowering for community maintainers and asynchronous delays not conducive to typical development workflows
3. Complicated on the security side of things

[dbeatty10]

My gut sense is that we'll want to do the work to unlock solution #3.

Cons

• Time and effort to iron out all the security details
• Each different database may require a bespoke solution

Pros

• We can also prioritize the most impactful databases adapters
• We have the advantage of assuming N>2 from the get-go -- the solution should assume many different community maintainers