dbt Incremental Models Documentation (2026)
Official dbt documentation for incremental models — last updated May 18, 2026.
Key facts surfaced (2026-05-19):
- Transforms only new or updated rows on subsequent runs versus reprocessing all source data.
on_schema_change: sync_all_columnsautomatically adds or removes columns without full refreshes.- Unique key definitions enable upsert semantics for idempotent processing.
- Significantly reduces runtime and compute cost for large, frequently-updated datasets.
- Curriculum reference: composable CDP equivalent of AEP delta field for incremental dataset updates (Module 12).