dbt Analytics Engineering Certification

Deferral points eligible references to existing source-environment relations, rather than making a snapshot. It is the best match for the latest-source row, although it does not invariably use the latest manifest or defer every reference. (docs.getdbt.com)

dbt clone creates target-schema objects that downstream tools can use. Where supported, native table clones are independent point-in-time copies that can be modified without changing the source. Otherwise, dbt creates a pointer view, so the point-in-time and independent-modification descriptions do not apply universally. (docs.getdbt.com)