Materialization
This term would benefit from additional depth and examples. Have knowledge to contribute? Create an issue in the docs.getdbt.com repository to begin the process of becoming a glossary contributor!
The exact Data Definition Language (DDL)Data Definition Language (DDL) is a group of SQL statements that you can execute to manage database objects, including tables, views, and more. that dbt will use when creating the model’s equivalent in a data warehouseA data warehouse is a data management system used for data storage and computing that allows for analytics activities such as transforming and sharing data.. It's the manner in which the data is represented, and each of those options is defined either canonically (tables, views, incremental), or bespoke.
It is important to consider the downstream impacts of your materialization choice on query run times and macro capabilities.