What Is a Data Pipeline? A Complete Guide

A data pipeline is an automated process for moving and transforming data from various sources into a usable format for analytics and decision-making. It’s comprised of five core components – source, extraction, transformation, loading, and destination – and is essential for organizations dealing with large, diverse datasets. While often used interchangeably, a data pipeline is broader than an ETL pipeline, encompassing all data movement processes, not just the specific Extract, Transform, Load sequence.