PROFILES.YML

CORE CONCEPT: DEFAULT TARGET

DVT works like dbt — your project has one primary default target of a specific adapter type. This is the engine where pushdown models execute their SQL. The target: key at the top level selects which output is the default.

You can define multiple outputs of the same type and host under the default target. These represent target environments — the same concept as dbt. For example, a dev and prod output both pointing to Snowflake on the same account.

All other outputs with different types or hosts act as external connections. DVT can extract data from these sources into the default target via the federation pipeline (Sling + DuckDB), or you can push models directly to them with config(target='...').

EXAMPLE

my_project:
  target: pg_dev                       # ← active default target
  outputs:

    # ─── Target Environments (same engine, safe to switch) ───

    pg_dev:                            # dev environment
      type: postgres
      host: db.internal.com
      port: 5432
      user: analyst
      password: "{{ env_var('PG_PASSWORD') }}"
      dbname: analytics_dev
      schema: public
      threads: 4

    pg_prod:                           # prod environment (same engine)
      type: postgres
      host: db.internal.com
      port: 5432
      user: dvt_service
      password: "{{ env_var('PG_PROD_PASSWORD') }}"
      dbname: analytics_prod
      schema: public
      threads: 8

    # ─── External Connections (different engines) ───

    mysql_ops:                         # MySQL operational database
      type: mysql
      host: mysql.internal.com
      port: 3306
      user: readonly
      password: "{{ env_var('MYSQL_PASSWORD') }}"
      schema: operations

    sf_warehouse:                      # Snowflake data warehouse
      type: snowflake
      account: xy12345.us-east-1
      user: DVT_USER
      password: "{{ env_var('SF_PASSWORD') }}"
      database: PROD_DB
      schema: RAW
      warehouse: COMPUTE_WH

    data_lake:                         # S3 bucket
      type: s3
      bucket: company-data-lake
      region: us-east-1
      access_key_id: "{{ env_var('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID') }}"
      secret_access_key: "{{ env_var('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY') }}"
      format: parquet

SWITCHING THE DEFAULT TARGET

You can switch the default target with --target on the CLI or by changing the target: value in profiles.yml. But not all switches are equal:

# Safe: environment switch (same engine)
dvt run --target pg_prod

# Safe: target migration (same engine, different host)
dvt run --target pg_staging

# Dangerous: engine shift (different adapter type!)
# Pushdown models written in PostgreSQL SQL will fail on Snowflake
dvt run --target sf_warehouse

DVT emits a DVT007 warning when --target changes the adapter type, but does not block execution. Extraction models (DuckDB SQL) are always safe across engine switches — only pushdown models are affected.

TARGET RESOLUTION

DVT resolves the target for each model in this priority order:

MODEL CONFIG EXTENSIONS

Standard dbt config plus DVT extensions:

-- Standard dbt config (works unchanged)
{{ config(
    materialized='incremental',
    unique_key='id',
    schema='analytics',
    tags=['finance']
) }}

-- DVT extension: target override
-- Materializes to a different output than the default
{{ config(
    materialized='table',
    target='sf_warehouse'
) }}

-- DVT extension: bucket target with format
{{ config(
    materialized='table',
    target='data_lake',
    format='delta'                 -- parquet, delta, csv, json, jsonl, avro
) }}

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

Use {{ env_var('VAR_NAME') }} in profiles.yml to reference environment variables. Never hardcode credentials.