Exam dbt-Analytics-Engineering Topic 3 Question 39 Discussion

The correct answer is D: dbt run --select +1 my_model.
In dbt's selection syntax, the + operator is used to include parents (upstream) and/or children (downstream) of a given node. When used as +my_model or my_model+, it means "include all ancestors" or "all descendants" respectively, with no limit on depth.
To limit how many levels of parents or children are included, dbt allows a numeric depth between the + and the resource name. +1 my_model (or my_model+1) means:
* Select my_model
* Plus only its first-degree parents (direct dependencies), and no further ancestors.
Because you want to materialize the models, you must use dbt run, not dbt compile. dbt compile only compiles SQL and does not create or update relations in the data platform.
So:
* Option A (dbt run --select +my_model) would include all upstream ancestors, not just first-degree parents.
* Options B and E use compile, so they don't materialize.
* Option C is just syntactically wrong.
Therefore, the only command that both runs models and limits selection to my_model plus its first-degree parents is dbt run --select +1 my_model.