Core Concepts¶
What is ETLrobot?¶
ETLrobot is and ETL automation platform. ETL stands for extract, transform, load, which are the steps in a process that moves data from a source to a destination. To put it another way, ETLrobot automates your complex cloud-based data extractions, data transformations, and then the loading of that data right to your data warehouse or database of choice.
ETL breakdown¶
- Extract: The process of extracting data from a given source such as Facebook Ads or your Shopify transactional data.
- Transform: The process of standardizing the extracted data with includes: normalizing data structures, standardizing naming, deduplication, timezone conversion, datatype conversions, and data cleanup.
- Load: The process of loading the transformed data to a data warehouse or database.
What ETLrobot is not¶
- A data visualization tool.
- A destination database or data warehouse.
- A data analysis service.
How to use ETLrobot¶
In just a few minutes with guided steps, you can easily automate your own data pipelines:
- Sign up for a ETLrobot account. Don’t have an account yet? Sign up here for your free trial.
- Select a source integration. A source is where we will be pulling data from.
- Connect a destination database. A destination is your database (typically a data warehouse) where we will load the data to.
Advantages to using ETLrobot¶
- Lowest cost platform (lowest TCO).
- Cleanest data structures. We use appropriate and efficient data types and do not overuse float and text like our competitors.
- Date and times are standardized to UTC.
- Secure transfer of data.
- ETLrobot does not retain any customer data.
- No limit on destination databases.
- SaaS platform which means "batteries included" (all development, maintenance, upgrades, monitoring, and notifications) — no programming needing.
- Excellent customer service.
Integrations and Destinations¶
To use ETLrobot, you need at least one source integration to pull data from and one destination database to push data to.
Integrations¶
An integration is a data source. Sources are typically SaaS platforms from various industries such as analytics, payments, CRMs, software development tools, e-commerce, ads, social, etc. During your free trial, all of ETLrobots’s integrations are accessible. After the trial ends, available integrations will be based you your plan type.
Destinations¶
ETLrobot supports many of the most popular database in the world such as Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and more. Your destination database may be on-premise or hosted with any hosting provider such as Google Cloud Platform, AWS, or Azure. The destination you choose determines how replicated data is loaded and structured.