Book Image

Building ETL Pipelines with Python

By : Brij Kishore Pandey, Emily Ro Schoof
5 (1)
Book Image

Building ETL Pipelines with Python

5 (1)
By: Brij Kishore Pandey, Emily Ro Schoof

Overview of this book

Modern extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines for data engineering have favored the Python language for its broad range of uses and a large assortment of tools, applications, and open source components. With its simplicity and extensive library support, Python has emerged as the undisputed choice for data processing. In this book, you’ll walk through the end-to-end process of ETL data pipeline development, starting with an introduction to the fundamentals of data pipelines and establishing a Python development environment to create pipelines. Once you've explored the ETL pipeline design principles and ET development process, you'll be equipped to design custom ETL pipelines. Next, you'll get to grips with the steps in the ETL process, which involves extracting valuable data; performing transformations, through cleaning, manipulation, and ensuring data integrity; and ultimately loading the processed data into storage systems. You’ll also review several ETL modules in Python, comparing their pros and cons when building data pipelines and leveraging cloud tools, such as AWS, to create scalable data pipelines. Lastly, you’ll learn about the concept of test-driven development for ETL pipelines to ensure safe deployments. By the end of this book, you’ll have worked on several hands-on examples to create high-performance ETL pipelines to develop robust, scalable, and resilient environments using Python.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1:Introduction to ETL, Data Pipelines, and Design Principles
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: A Primer on Python and the Development Environment
5
Part 2:Designing ETL Pipelines with Python
11
Part 3:Creating ETL Pipelines in AWS
15
Part 4:Automating and Scaling ETL Pipelines

What is an ETL data pipeline?

ETL stands for Extract, Transform, and Load. In an ELT process, data is first extracted from a source, then transformed and formatted in a specific way, and finally loaded into a final storage location. These pipelines are useful for organizing and preparing data for future purposes such as performing analysis and model creation smoothly and efficiently:

Figure 2.4: Sample ETL pipeline

Figure 2.4: Sample ETL pipeline

ELT stands for Extract, Load, and Transform, and is similar to ETL, but the data is first loaded into the target system and then transformed within the target system.

Which one to use depends on the specific requirements and characteristics of the systems involved and the data being moved. Here are a few factors that you might consider when deciding between ETL and ELT:

  • Data volume: If the volume of data is very large, ELT might be more efficient because the transformation step can be done in parallel within the target system
  • ...