Creating a Continuous Integration (CI) Job (Edge)

A CI job validates your dbt code changes before they are merged into the target branch. Each time a developer opens or updates a pull request on GitHub, the CI job runs automatically, executing the dbt commands you have configured against the selected environment. This allows your team to catch errors before changes reach your production data. Unlike a deploy job, which builds and updates dbt models in your Destination, a CI job focuses on validation. It checks that the new code runs without errors and passes your dbt tests against the existing project structure. You can configure the CI job to use deferral, which means it compares your changes against an existing environment and only validates the models that have changed, rather than running a full validation from scratch. This makes CI runs faster on large projects.

Note: Before creating a CI job, ensure that all the prerequisites are completed.

Perform the following steps to create a CI job:

1. In the Navigation Bar, click Transformations.

2. On the Transformations page, select the project for which you want to create a CI job.

3. In the Transformations Detailed View, click the Jobs tab.

   

4. Click + Create Job and select Continuous Integration (CI) Job from the drop-down.

   

5. On the Create CI Job page, do the following:

   

   • Job Name: Specify a unique name for the job. For example, my-transformation-job.

   • Environment: Select the environment that contains the target Git branch. The CI job validates pull requests that target this branch before the changes are merged.

   • In the Execution Settings section:

     • Commands: Click Add Command to specify the dbt commands you want to execute during the job run. By default, dbt deps is included, which installs the packages listed in your packages.yml file before the models execute. For example, in the image above, we have added the dbt build command, which compiles and tests your models.

     • Compare changes against an environment: Select an existing environment to use as a reference when validating your changes. The CI job then validates only the models that differ from that environment, making the validation faster. Select No Deferral to validate all models from scratch instead.

   • Trigger Mode: On Pull Request is the only mode currently available for CI jobs. The job starts automatically when a pull request is opened or updated against the Git branch specified in the selected environment.

6. Click Create Job.

You are redirected to the Jobs tab, where the new CI job appears in the list. The job will run automatically the next time a pull request is opened or updated against the target branch.

Note: If a CI job fails, review the step-by-step execution logs to identify and resolve the error. Do not merge the pull request until the CI job passes successfully. Merging a pull request with a failing CI job may cause the subsequent merge and deploy jobs to also fail.

See Also

• Creating a Merge Job

• Creating a Deploy Job

• Managing Jobs

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