The data transformation tool market has evolved with tools like dbt being highly popular, serving a crucial role in modern data pipelines by enabling efficient data modeling and management. A semantic layer is designed to solve common issues such as duplicated effort, disparate calculated metrics, and poor performance by defining a domain-specific data model on top of transformed data, providing consistent access controls and aggregate awareness. The integration between dbt and Cube aims to simplify the process of using both tools together, allowing users to leverage the strengths of each tool and improve their overall data engineering experience.