Naming Conventions

Consistent naming makes your dbt project easier to understand and maintain.

Model Naming

Column Naming

• •IDs: [entity]_id (customer_id, order_id)
• •Dates: [event]_date (order_date, created_date)
• •Timestamps: [event]_at (created_at, updated_at)
• •Booleans: is_[state] or has_[thing]
• •Amounts: [description]_amount (order_amount)
• •Counts: [thing]_count (order_count)

CTE Naming

with

source as (
    -- Always name the first CTE 'source' when selecting from source/ref
    select * from {{ ref('stg_ecommerce__orders') }}
),

renamed as (
    -- Use 'renamed' for column renaming operations
    select ... from source
),

filtered as (
    -- Use 'filtered' when applying WHERE clauses
    select ... from renamed where ...
),

aggregated as (
    -- Use 'aggregated' for GROUP BY operations
    select ... from filtered group by ...
),

final as (
    -- Always name the last CTE 'final'
    select ... from aggregated
)

select * from final

General Rules

1. 1snake_case everything - Tables, columns, CTEs
2. 2Lowercase - No UPPERCASE or CamelCase
3. 3No abbreviations - customer not cust, except common ones (id, url)
4. 4Singular nouns - dim_customer not dim_customers
5. 5Descriptive names - order_total not ot or total