What is ETL/ELT pipelines?

ETL/ELT pipelines are data integration processes that move data from various source systems into a data warehouse or data lake. ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) extracts data, transforms it into a consistent format, and then loads it into the target system. ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) extracts data, loads it into the target system (often a data lake or data warehouse with significant processing power), and then transforms it there. ETL is often used when source systems have limited processing power or when data quality needs to be improved before loading. ELT is more common with modern cloud data warehouses that can handle large-scale transformations.