Data Pipelines and ETL/ELT
The core artifact of data engineering is the pipeline: an automated flow that pulls data from somewhere, reshapes it, and lands it somewhere useful. And the single most consequential shift in modern data engineering is captured in three reordered letters — ETL became ELT — a change driven by cheap, powerful cloud data warehouses that flipped when and where transformation happens. Understanding pipelines, and the ETL-to-ELT shift, is understanding how data actually moves and gets made usable.
The core artifact of data engineering is the pipeline: an automated flow that pulls data from somewhere, reshapes it, and lands it somewhere useful. And the single most consequential modern shift is captured in three reordered letters — ETL became ELT — driven by cheap, powerful cloud data warehouses that flipped when and where transformation happens.