ETL vs ELT: Which One is Right for Your Data Pipeline? - KDnuggets

ETL and ELT are data integration pipelines that transfer data from multiple sources to a single centralized source and perform some transformation and processing steps to it. The difference between these two is ETL transforms the data before loading, and ELT transforms the data after loading. But before diving deeply into them, let's first understand the meaning of E, L, and T. T for Transform - Transforming the data is a process of cleaning and modifying the data in a format so that it can be used for business analysis. L for Loading - It involves loading data to a target system, which may be a data warehouse or a database. ETL is the first standardized data integration method that emerged in the 1970s due to the evolution of disk storage.