PDE Ingesting and Processing the Data Practice Question
A company uses dbt on BigQuery to transform data. They want to run dbt models on a schedule and manage environments (dev, prod). Which GCP service should they use to run dbt jobs?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Cloud Composer
Cloud Composer is an Apache Airflow managed service that can schedule dbt runs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Dataflow
Why it's wrong here
Dataflow runs Apache Beam pipelines for streaming and batch data processing, not dbt CLI invocations against BigQuery. It is tempting because it is a managed data-processing service on GCP, and would be correct for building transformation pipelines directly in Beam rather than orchestrating existing dbt models.
- ✓
Cloud Composer
Why this is correct
Cloud Composer provides managed Apache Airflow scheduling, letting dbt jobs run on cron-like schedules with separate dev and prod environments configured as distinct DAG variables or connections. This satisfies both the scheduling and environment-management requirements.
- ✗
Cloud Scheduler
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Scheduler only fires triggers at defined times; it cannot itself execute dbt commands or manage dev and prod environments, so it needs a separate compute target. It is tempting because scheduling is explicitly required, and would be correct as the cron component paired with Cloud Run jobs or Composer rather than the execution service.
- ✗
Cloud Build
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Build executes container build and CI/CD steps, not scheduled dbt model runs with environment separation; it lacks dbt-native scheduling and target management. It is tempting as a GCP CI/CD tool, but Cloud Composer (Airflow) is the correct choice for orchestrating scheduled dbt jobs across dev and prod.
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This PDE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PDE exam.