What Is ETL? Understand In 200 Words

Extract, Transform and Load – ETL, forms the fundamental process behind any kind of data management.

ETL – Extraction, Transformation and Loading, is a trilogy of processes that collects varied source data from heterogeneous databases and transforms them into disparate data warehouses.

Extract:

• Reads data from multiple data sources and extracts required set of data
• Recovers necessary data with optimum usage of resources
• Should not disturb data sources, performance and functioning

Transform:

• Filtration, cleansing and preparation of data extracted, with lookup tables
• Authentication of records, refutation and integration of data
• Data to be sorted, filtered, cleared, standardized, translated or verified for consistency

Load:

• Writing data output, after extraction and transformation to a data warehouse
• Either physical insertion of record as a new row in database table or link processes for each record from the main source

Benefits

• Brings out meaningful patterns & insights
• Converts assorted data into a consistent format
• Aids derive business intelligence from data
• Contains readily usable components
• Effortlessly manages complex transformation
• Offers maximized RoI

Future of ETL

• Unified data management architecture
• Data lakes
• ETL and cloud
• Machine learning with data integration

A Good Read: Pentaho ETL Development