The CI/CD Pipeline Maturity Model.

A mature software delivery pipeline distinguishes between three phases:
1. Verification (Static): Does the code look right? (Linting, Compilation).
2. Delivery (State Change): Applying the code to the target system.
3. Verification (Dynamic): Does the system behave correctly? (Smoke Tests, Integration Tests).

Application: Databricks Asset Bundles (DABs) brings this maturity to Data Engineering. The CLI commands map directly to these phases.

validate: Resolves complex variable substitutions and target overrides locally. It catches syntax errors (e.g., invalid indentation in YAML) instantly, saving the API overhead of a failed deployment.
deploy: Is transactional. It ensures the workspace state matches the code state.
run: Closes the loop. Merely deploying code doesn't mean it works. Triggering the job validates that runtime dependencies (libraries, permissions, data access) are correctly configured. Using this strict sequence Validate -> Deploy -> Run ensures that only healthy, tested code is promoted from Staging to Production.

Topic: GitHub & Dataops