Every person in the data-driven business world must have experienced the need for ETL in day-to-day business operations. As with the growing competition, it has become crucial to effectively break down every piece of data to drive useful insights from it. One of the best ways to get relevant information from large volumes of data is through an ETL process.

What is ETL?

ETL is a process that extracts large volumes of data from multiple source systems, transforms the data in a single format, and then load the formatted data into a data warehouse system. The loaded data is then used by the authorized persons in the organization to make game-changing decisions for their business.

How do ETL tools work?

ETL tools help in connecting and reading data from numerous sources like relational databases, Cobol files, XML files, flat files etc. The ability to connect and read data from different sources is the major advantage of these tools. The tools ensure data accuracy by identifying each and every possible error quickly. They extract a large volume of data from different source systems and migrate it from one database to another into specific formats and finally load the data into an integrated data warehouse, from where it is used by the employees to develop valuable insights into the business.

There are different ETL tools available in the market, and the most popular ones are as follows:

• Oracle: The tool offers diverse data warehouse solutions for both on-premises and in the cloud. It helps you to optimize customer experiences by boosting operational efficiency

• MarkLogic: This tool makes the data integration process easier and quicker by offering an array of enterprise features. It can query different types of data, such as relationships, documents, and metadata.

• Improvado: The tools will help you to extract data from various marketing platform and load it into a data warehouse. It will help your business to save time and effort involved in manual reporting.

• Amazon Redshift: The cost-effective tool to analyze all your data is Amazon Redshift. With this tool at your end, you can run complex queries against big data silos. 

Benefits of using ETL tools

Effective open source ETL tools and marketing ETL tools help a business in the following ways: 

• To make better business decisions by analyzing crucial business data.
• To answer critical business questions that were difficult to address with transactional databases.
• Provide the ability to move data from multiple sources to a data warehouse in an efficient manner.
• To verifies data transformation, aggregation and calculations rules.
• Allow data comparison between the source and the target system.
• Provide the ability to perform complex transformations and stores the large volume of data.
•  Convert the extracted data into various formats and types to adhere to one consistent system.
• Enhance productivity by decoding the complex data.