What is Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL)

A data warehouse (DW) is a complete intelligent data storage and information delivery or distribution solution enabling users to customize the flow of information through their organization (Inmon & Hackathorn, 2002). It provides all authorized members of users’ organization with flexible, secure, and rapid access to critical information and intelligent reporting. DW can extract information from sources anywhere in the world and then delivers intelligence anywhere in the world. It connects to any platform, database, data source, and it will also scale to businesses and applications of any size. As early as the 1970’s, data warehousing software (DWS) was recognized when the earliest systems were first developed. The database designs of operational systems were not effective enough for the information analysis and reporting (The Data Warehousing Information Center, 2006).