Concept / Term · Established
Extract, Transform, Load / Extract, Load, Transform
Two data-pipeline orders: ETL cleans data before loading it, while ELT loads raw data first and transforms it inside the destination platform.
Field note
Both patterns move data from source systems into an analytical destination. ETL transforms before loading; ELT loads the raw data first and transforms it inside a powerful warehouse or lakehouse.
Extract, Transform, Load is the older warehouse sequence. Extract, Load, Transform became common as cloud analytical platforms made storage cheaper and in-database processing more capable.
Pipelines ingest application, finance and marketing records, clean and reconcile them, then produce trusted datasets for reporting or modelling.
The ordering affects cost, auditability, flexibility, data quality controls and how quickly new questions can be answered.
In a sentence“We use ELT so the raw event data is preserved and each team can build governed transformations from it.”