I Thought Loading Data Was the Finish Line. It Was the Starting Point.

Loading data into a database is only the starting point for making it useful, not the final step. Raw data from an RSS pipeline was not analysis-ready, with dates stored as text and author names embedded in titles, preventing basic analysis. The dbt (data build tool) was adopted to create staging models that clean and structure this raw data. Using SQL within dbt, dates were properly cast to timestamps, titles were parsed to extract author names, and tests were added to ensure data quality. This transformation process resulted in a clean data mart, finally enabling meaningful queries and analysis that were previously impossible.