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litch711Let’s start with an introduction to Meltano.
Meltano is an open-source ELT tool, which means it helps you Extract, Load, and
Transform data. What makes Meltano stand out is that it’s modular and developer-
friendly—it’s built with flexibility in mind, allowing you to customize each part of
your pipeline. Under the hood, it’s built on Singer.io for data extraction and dbt for
transformation—two very popular tools in the data engineering world. This makes
Meltano a great choice if you’re building customizable, code-based data pipelines
that can scale and evolve with your project.
Now let’s take a closer look at how Meltano works. At its core, Meltano uses three
main pipeline components: Extractors, also called Taps, are used to collect data
from different sources like APIs or databases—think GitHub, Salesforce, or MySQL.
Then come the Loaders, or Targets, which are used to store that data into a
destination, such as a data warehouse or a database like PostgreSQL or BigQuery.
After loading, we use Transformers to clean and structure the data. Meltano
supports dbt for this step, which allows us to use SQL-based transformations in a
very powerful and reusable way. Now, what makes Meltano especially developer-
friendly are two things: First, it’s completely CLI-based, meaning everything is run
through the terminal. This makes it easy to automate workflows, write scripts, and
integrate Meltano into CI/CD pipelines. Second, all configurations are stored in a
single YAML file called meltano.yml. This file defines your entire pipeline and makes
it easy to track changes using version control tools like Git. So in short, Meltano
combines clarity, modularity, and automation—making it an excellent tool for
building clean and repeatable data pipelines.
Here's a simple and demo-friendly Meltano project setup
To install Meltano, run the following command in PowerShell (Git Bash doesn’t
always pick up the Python scripts in PATH properly so PowerShell is the best
option):
python -m pip install meltano
After the installation, check that it's installed by running:
python -m pip show meltano
It display information about the Meltano package, including its version and
installation path.
Once it's installed, you should be able to run:
meltano --version
Now you can see your meltano version and this means it works successfully, so you
can then move forward with setting up your project.
So, now lets create a new Meltano project:
meltano init demo_project
cd demo_project
Then, let's add an extractor, which is a data source. I’ll add the GitHub API extractor
to fetch data from GitHub.
meltano add extractor tap-github
This command will configure the GitHub extractor in my Meltano project.
After that, we are in Step 4 that is adding a loader to send the data to a destination.
For this example, I will use PostgreSQL as the destination as I have PostgreSQL in my
laptop, but you can change this based on your preference.
meltano add loader target-postgres
Finally the last step, we can add dbt file which is Data Build Tool for data
transformations. This will allow you to clean and prepare the data in your database.
meltano add transformer dbt
Now the project is successfully set up a simple ELT pipeline.
You can explore more advanced features and customization, such as adding different
extractors, loaders, and using dbt models to perform specific data transformations.
So, where does Meltano really shine? Who should consider using it? Meltano is a
great fit for situations where you need customizable ELT pipelines—especially when
off-the-shelf tools aren’t flexible enough. It’s particularly well-suited for analytics
teams that are comfortable working with YAML configurations and the command
line interface. These teams often want more control over their pipelines than what
visual tools provide. Meltano also supports a code-based approach, making it ideal
for environments where automation, reproducibility, and version control are
priorities. In terms of integration, it works seamlessly with many popular data
warehouses, such as Google BigQuery, Snowflake, and PostgreSQL. So if your team
wants to manage pipelines using code, track every change, and plug into modern
analytics tools, Meltano is definitely worth considering.
Like any tool, Meltano has its strengths and weaknesses.
Starting with the pros:
First, it’s open-source and completely free, which makes it very accessible for teams
of all sizes. It’s also modular and extendable—you can choose your own extractors,
loaders, and transformers to fit your specific use case. Meltano has strong
integration with dbt, which is one of the most popular tools for data transformation
today. And because it’s CLI-based, it fits perfectly into automated workflows and
developer pipelines.
Now for the cons:
he community is smaller compared to tools like Airflow, which means less support
and fewer tutorials. Some Singer taps—which are used for extracting data—are
community-maintained, so their quality and stability can vary. Lastly, Meltano
doesn’t offer a rich visual interface, which might be a drawback for teams who
prefer point-and-click tools. So while it’s powerful, it’s definitely better suited for
teams that are comfortable working in a code-driven environment.
To wrap up —
Meltano is a powerful, open-source ELT tool that's designed for building
customizable and scalable data pipelines.
It’s especially valuable for teams that prefer a developer-focused workflow,
appreciate the flexibility of code, and want to take advantage of automation and
version control.
If your team is looking for a modern, modular alternative to traditional data pipeline
tools—Meltano is definitely worth exploring.
Thanks for listening — and I’m happy to take any questions!
