ETL—meaning extract, transform, load—is a data integration process
that combines, cleans and organizes data from multiple sources into a single, consistent data set for storage in a data warehouse, data lake or other target system. ETL pipelines are often used by organizations to: Extract data from legacy systems Cleanse the data to improve data quality and establish consistency Load data into a target database Functions of ETL Reporting & Dashboards- Share key performance indicators (KPI) with decision makers. Forecasting – Project future sales, demand, and maintenance requirements. Visualization – Provide a visual way to interact with data and make new insights. Architecture ETL function lies at the core of Business Intelligence systems. With ETL, enterprises can obtain historical, current, and predictive views of real business data. Let’s look at some ETL features that are necessary for business intelligence. How ETL Works?
ETL systems are designed to accomplish three complex database
functions: extract, transform and load. 1. Extraction The extraction phase maps the data from different sources into a unified format before processing.
ETL systems ensure the following while extracting data.
Removing redundant (duplicate) or fragmented data Removing spam or unwanted data Reconciling records with source data Checking data types and key attributes. 2. Transformation
This stage involves applying algorithms and modifying data according to
business-specific rules. The common operations performed in ETL’s transformation stage is computation, concatenation, filters, and string operations like currency, time, data format, etc. It also validates the following-
Data cleaning like adding ‘0’ to null values
Threshold validation like age cannot be more than two digits Data standardization according to the rules and lookup table. 3. Loading
Loading is a process of migrating structured data into the warehouse. Usually,
large volumes of data need to be loaded in a short time. ETL applications play a crucial role in optimizing the load process with efficient recovery mechanisms for the instances of loading failures.
A typical ETL process involves three types of loading functions-
Initial load: it populates the records in the data warehouse.
Incremental load: it applies changes (updates) periodically as per the requirements. Full refresh: It reloads the warehouse with fresh records by erasing the old contents. Why is ETL important?
Organizations today have both structured and unstructured data from
various sources. By applying the process of extract, transform, and load (ETL), individual raw datasets can be prepared in a format and structure that is more consumable for analytics purposes, resulting in more meaningful insights. For example, online retailers can analyze data from points of sale to forecast demand and manage inventory. Marketing teams can integrate CRM data with customer feedback on social media to study consumer behavior. How does ETL benefit business intelligence? Extract, transform, and load (ETL) improves business intelligence and analytics by making the process more reliable, accurate, detailed, and efficient.
Historical context ETL gives deep historical context to the organization’s data. An enterprise can combine legacy data with data from new platforms and applications. You can view older datasets alongside more recent information, which gives you a long-term view of data. Consolidated data view ETL provides a consolidated view of data for in-depth analysis and reporting. Managing multiple datasets demands time and coordination and can result in inefficiencies and delays. ETL combines databases and various forms of data into a single, unified view. The data integration process improves the data quality and saves the time required to move, categorize, or standardize data. This makes it easier to analyze, visualize, and make sense of large datasets. Accurate data analysis ETL gives more accurate data analysis to meet compliance and regulatory standards. You can integrate ETL tools with data quality tools to profile, audit, and clean data, ensuring that the data is trustworthy. Task automation ETL automates repeatable data processing tasks for efficient analysis. ETL tools automate the data migration process, and you can set them up to integrate data changes periodically or even at runtime. As a result, data engineers can spend more time innovating and less time managing tedious tasks like moving and formatting data. What is ELT?
Extract, load, and transform (ELT) is an extension of extract, transform,
and load (ETL) that reverses the order of operations. You can load data directly into the target system before processing it. The intermediate staging area is not required because the target data warehouse has data mapping capabilities within it. ELT has become more popular with the adoption of cloud infrastructure, which gives target databases the processing power they need for transformations. ETL compared to ELT The primary difference between ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) and ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) is the order in which data is processed. In ELT, raw data is loaded directly into the target data store and transformed as needed, making it suitable for handling high-volume, unstructured datasets and big data management without extensive upfront planning. In contrast, ETL requires detailed planning, where specific data points and integration keys are identified before loading data into a staging area for transformation based on business rules. This process often involves tracking metadata and depends on data requirements for analysis. While ELT has gained popularity due to cloud database adoption, it is still evolving, and best practices are being established. The benefits and challenges of ETL ETL solutions improve quality by performing data cleansing before loading the data to a different repository. A time-consuming batch operation, ETL is recommended more often for creating smaller target data repositories that require less frequent updating, while other data integration methods—including ELT (extract, load, transform), change data capture (CDC) and data virtualization—are used to integrate increasingly larger volumes of data that changes or real-time data streams References 1. Successful Business Intelligence by Cindi Howson 2. Business Intelligence by Swain Scheps 3. https://www.ibm.com/topics/etl 4. https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/etl 5. https://mozartdata.com/etl-in-business-intelligence/ 6. https://www.mantralabsglobal.com/blog/etl-in-business-intelligence / 7. https://www.mantralabsglobal.com/blog/etl-in-business-intelligence /
THE STEP BY STEP GUIDE FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF DATA LAKE-LAKEHOUSE-DATA WAREHOUSE: "THE STEP BY STEP GUIDE FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF DATA LAKE-LAKEHOUSE-DATA WAREHOUSE"
Knight's Microsoft Business Intelligence 24-Hour Trainer: Leveraging Microsoft SQL Server Integration, Analysis, and Reporting Services with Excel and SharePoint
THE STEP BY STEP GUIDE FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF DATA LAKE-LAKEHOUSE-DATA WAREHOUSE: "THE STEP BY STEP GUIDE FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF DATA LAKE-LAKEHOUSE-DATA WAREHOUSE"
Knight's Microsoft Business Intelligence 24-Hour Trainer: Leveraging Microsoft SQL Server Integration, Analysis, and Reporting Services with Excel and SharePoint
