# About environments

In software engineering, environments are used to enable engineers to develop and test code without impacting the users of their software. Typically, there are two types of environments in dbt:

* **Deployment or Production** (or *prod*) — Refers to the environment that end users interact with.

* **Development** (or *dev*) — Refers to the environment that engineers work in. This means that engineers can work iteratively when writing and testing new code in *development*. Once they are confident in these changes, they can deploy their code to *production*.

In traditional software engineering, different environments often use completely separate architecture. For example, the dev and prod versions of a website may use different servers and databases. Data warehouses can also be designed to have separate environments — the *production* environment refers to the relations (for example, schemas, tables, and views) that your end users query (often through a BI tool).

Configure environments to tell dbt or dbt Core how to build and execute your project in development and production:

[![](/img/icons/dbt-bit.svg)](./dbt-platform-environments.md)

#### [Environments in dbt](./dbt-platform-environments.md)

[Seamlessly configure development and deployment environments in dbt to control how your project runs in both the Studio IDE, dbt platform CLI, and dbt jobs.](./dbt-platform-environments.md)

[![](/img/icons/command-line.svg)](./local/dbt-core-environments.md)

#### [Environments in dbt Core](./local/dbt-core-environments.md)

[Setup and maintain separate deployment and development environments through the use of targets within a profile file](./local/dbt-core-environments.md)

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## Related docs

* [dbt environment best practices](../guides/set-up-ci.md)
* [Deployment environments](./deploy/deploy-environments.md)
* [About dbt Core versions](./dbt-versions.md)
* [Set Environment variables in dbt](./build/environment-variables.md#special-environment-variables)
* [Use Environment variables in jinja](../reference/dbt-jinja-functions/env_var.md)

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