ETL
Technology & Computing abbreviation · Data & Database
| Stands for | Extract, transform, load |
|---|---|
| Categories | Technology & Computing |
ETL stands for Extract, transform, load, a data & database abbreviation.
The process of copying data from source systems, cleaning and reshaping it, and loading it into a data warehouse or other target. Nightly ETL jobs feed most traditional business reports and dashboards.
Example: The sales dashboard is stale because last night's ETL job failed on a malformed date.
Usage notes
The approach dates from the 1970s and became central to data warehousing in the 1990s, with tools such as Informatica, SSIS and Talend. Cloud warehouses made it cheaper to load raw data first and transform it afterward, the ELT approach. "Reverse ETL" sends warehouse data back into operational tools such as CRMs.
Related abbreviations
More data & database abbreviations
- DWH – Data warehouse
- EDA – Exploratory data analysis
- EDW – Enterprise data warehouse
- ELK – Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana
- ELT – Extract, load, transform
- ERD – Entity-relationship diagram
- FK – Foreign key
- HDFS – Hadoop Distributed File System
- JDBC – Java Database Connectivity
- KV – Key-value (store)
- MDM – Master data management
- MPP – Massively parallel processing