BMW Group's Cloud Efficiency Analytics (CLEA) team developed a serverless data transformation pipeline using Amazon Athena and dbt to optimize costs and increase efficiency.
Initially facing challenges with schema complexity and high query costs, the team adopted Athena, dbt, AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions, and AWS Glue for enhanced development agility and processing efficiency.
The architecture includes around 400 dbt models, integrates seamlessly with GitHub Actions workflows for automation, and employs incremental loads for better performance and schema management.
The solution is organized into three stages—Source, Prepared, and Semantic—each serving a specific purpose in the data transformation process.
Dbt's SQL-centric approach, documentation capabilities, testing framework, and dependency graph have significantly improved the team's agility in modeling and deployment.
The use of Athena workgroups, QuickSight SPICE, and effective partitioning strategies have contributed to scalability and cost-efficiency in the data transformation pipeline.
The architecture has reduced operational overhead, enhanced processing efficiency, and provided significant cost savings through optimized query executions and materialization patterns.
With Athena's serverless model and dbt's incremental processing, the team achieved rapid model development, streamlined deployment, and improved data processing accuracy.
The architecture is ideal for teams looking to prototype, test, and deploy data models efficiently while maintaining high data quality and reducing resource usage.
The adoption of dbt and Athena enables BMW Group to manage growing data volumes effectively, optimize resource allocation, and achieve cost savings through efficient data processing approaches.
This serverless architecture is recommended for teams aiming to accelerate data model deployment, enhance cost efficiency, and ensure accurate, high-quality data processing.