[talos_]

dbt needs to play catch up against SQLMesh feature-wise, so they bought their other competitor SDF. SQLMesh seems to have more development velocity, and dbt will need to execute a smooth transition and integration to catch up.

For context, the team behind SQLMesh also develops SQLGlot, which powers the features dbt attempts to implement

[NortySpock]

To expand on this, dbt uses Jinja templating in your SQL to allow the developer to modify the query so it can be expanded at "compile-time" into the target database SQL dialect. (uni-directional, write once deploy anywhere). The key features are CICD, test automation, and transformation sequence automation.

SQLGlot is a Abstract Symbol Tree SQL Dialect transpiler that could (in theory) convert from one dialect to another (bi-directional).

SQLMesh appears to combine both of the above into one tool that sounds like it's even better.