What is 'dbt snapshots' used for?

Dbt snapshots are specifically designed for capturing the state of a table at defined intervals, allowing for the tracking of changes over time. This concept is fundamental for audit purposes and historical analysis, as it helps you understand how your data evolves, enabling you to maintain accurate insights and trends from historical data. By using snapshots, teams can store these historical states and easily query them to analyze how data has changed, identify patterns, or rollback to previous states if needed.

In contrast, the other choices are geared toward different aspects of data management and analysis. Creating real-time dashboards focuses on immediate analytics and visual reporting, rather than the historical context that snapshots provide. Automating the ETL process relates to the extraction, transformation, and loading of data, which is a separate concern from capturing historical states. Finally, backing up the entire dbt project is about protecting all project files and configurations, rather than the specific goal of tracking data changes over time. Therefore, the primary and unique purpose of dbt snapshots is well represented in the correct answer.