What is ETL software and how is it related to DSS?
Data warehousing practitioners have all experienced the frustration of creating a large data store from existing operating data bases built using a variety of data models and technologies. ETL software attempts to make that task easier. ETL is an acronym for extract, transform and load. This type of software is also called data extraction software and it is sometimes referred to as “pipeline software” (cf., Gray and Watson, 1998).In managing databases, ETL refers to a software package with three primary functions. EXTRACT reads data from a specified database and writes a subset of data to a file. TRANSFORM changes the new data set using rules or lookup tables. Finally, LOAD writes the data set to a database intended to support reporting, queries, drill down and other decision support solutions.ETL software can be used to create a temporary data set for a specific decision support purpose or it may be used to create and refresh a more permanent data mart or data warehouse.Why is ETL sof
