Skip to content
~/reflective_data

analytics-dictionary / term / data infrastructure

ELT (extract, load, transform)

ELT loads raw data into the warehouse first and transforms it there afterwards, using the warehouse engine.

Written by Reflective Data experts · updated Oct 5, 2026

Keeping raw data means you can re-run or change transformations later without re-extracting. Tools like dbt handle the transformation step with SQL, version control and tests.

It has become the default pattern for cloud data stacks.

related

Data pipelineData warehousedbtETL (extract, transform, load)

// how we can help

Moving data into your warehouse? Our managed pipelines run it for you. Managed data pipelines → · Browse integrations

more in data infrastructure

google-cloud.md

Google Cloud

Google Cloud is Google cloud computing platform, home to BigQuery, Cloud Storage and many data and…
google-analytics-parallel-tracking.md

Google Analytics Parallel Tracking

Parallel Tracking sends a second copy of your GA4 hits to your own data pipeline, so…
semi-structured-data.md

Semi-structured data

Semi-structured data has a flexible shape, like JSON, rather than fixed rows and columns.
aws.md

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS is Amazon cloud platform, offering storage, compute and data services such as S3 and Redshift.
data-ingestion.md

Data ingestion

Data ingestion is the process of bringing data from sources into a storage or analytics system.
materialized-view.md

Materialized view

A materialized view stores the precomputed result of a query, so reports read it quickly instead…

← full analytics dictionary