DevOps Articles

ETL vs ELT flowchart: When to use each

In this post, we’ll discuss the difference between ETL vs ELT and when you might choose ETL or ELT. We’ll also include a flowchart to help walk you through the ETL vs ELT decision-making process. What’s the difference between ETL and ELT?

If your transformations are simple and/or your endpoint does not support complex transformations, then you should definitely choose an ETL process and perform the transformations prior to loading. However, if your transformations are complex and subject to frequent changes and your endpoint supports the processing power, then an ELT process gives you the flexibility to run any transformations after loading the data.