ETL vs ELT: See the Difference
InteractiveDemo (Synthetic)Click ETL or ELT to watch the pipeline order change. Same dataset, different flow.
Business Question
When data arrives from multiple systems with inconsistent formats, where should transformation happen to maximize reliability and speed (before storage vs in-warehouse)?
How this is used
This mini-simulator is used to explain pipeline tradeoffs to stakeholders (analytics, data engineering, and product) and to justify where validation + standardization should live.
Note: Dataset is synthetic for demonstration. No real customer or company data is shown.
Definitions
Extract = ingest raw records from source systems.
Transform = standardize fields (names, casing), parse types (revenue), validate constraints.
Load = write to warehouse tables for downstream querying.
Data Quality Snapshot (Raw vs Clean)
Raw
Rows
OK
Invalid revenue
OK
Revenue sum
OK
Channel variants
OK
Item variants
OK
Logical duplicates
CHECK
Clean
Rows
OK
Invalid revenue
OK
Revenue sum
OK
Channel variants
OK
Item variants
OK
Logical duplicates
CHECK
Professional note: in production, these checks typically live in dbt tests / Great Expectations or pipeline validation steps, and failures block deployment or alert owners.
Key takeaway: ETL transforms before storage (stronger upstream validation, consistent curated tables). Use when schemas are stable and you want strict guarantees for downstream consumers.
SQL Efficiency Playground
Engine: WarehouseBusiness question: Which customer segments drove revenue over the last 90 days?
Recruiter takeaway
I optimize analytics queries by pruning partitions, pushing predicates down, joining on stable keys, and leveraging rollups—then validate the impact using execution plans and cost signals.
Efficiency
0/6 togglesToggle techniques ON/OFF to update SQL and the execution summary.
0%
Optimization toggles
Summary
Toggles change the likely execution strategy.
Scan
Broader time scan
Filter
Filter later
Join
String join
Layout
Default layout
Aggregation
Raw aggregation
Optimizer
Stats stale
Estimates are illustrative cost proxies, not benchmarks.