Which dbt command is used to compile SQL without running it?

The dbt command that is used to compile SQL without actually executing it is “dbt compile.” This command processes your dbt models and generates the SQL that will be run against the data warehouse, but it stops short of executing that SQL. This is particularly useful for debugging and understanding how dbt is transforming your models without impacting the database or incurring any costs associated with query execution.

By using dbt compile, you can inspect the SQL generated from your models and ensure that everything is set up as expected before actually running the model using other commands. This allows you to verify that the transformations defined in your dbt model files are correctly represented in the generated SQL, which is critical for maintaining accuracy in your data pipelines.

The other commands serve different purposes: debugging checks for connection issues, running executes the transformations as defined in the models, and testing validates that the data meets specified criteria, but none of these provide the compilation function alone.