Glossary · letter E
ELT
Extract, Load, TransformData architecture pattern
Definition
A newer data flow paradigm: data is first loaded raw into the Data Warehouse, then transformed in place. ELT reverses the sequence of classic ETL — it leverages the compute power of cloud warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery) for transformation instead of processing in an intermediate layer.
Business application
A company migrating from an on-premise Data Warehouse to Snowflake often switches from ETL to ELT — transformations that previously ran overnight on a local server now complete in minutes in Snowflake.