What are 'reports' in the context of dbt?

In the context of dbt, reports refer to visualizations built on top of dbt models, often leveraged in business intelligence tools. This aligns with dbt's ethos of transforming raw data into a more usable format through models, which can then be visualized to facilitate decision-making. These visualizations typically draw from the structured tables and datasets produced by dbt, presenting the data in a way that is accessible and informative for end-users or stakeholders.

These reports are essential as they transform complex data into digestible insights, allowing teams to make data-driven decisions. Using business intelligence tools to visualize these reports enhances the analytical capability of an organization, making it easier to uncover trends and derive actionable insights.

The other choices describe elements related to data processing and documentation but do not capture the function of reports in the same way. Aggregated data tables are part of the data transformation process, raw SQL files are more about the underlying code used to create transformations, and documentation files serve a different purpose by providing context and guidance on using the dbt models. Thus, the choice centered on visualizations captures the essence of what reports signify in the dbt ecosystem.