Why ETL-Zero? Understanding the shift in Data Integration as a Beginner | by Sarah Lea | Nov, 2024

When I was preparing for the Salesforce Data Cloud certification, I came across the term Zero-ETL. The Data Cloud offers the possibility to access data directly from other systems such as data warehouses or data lakes or sharing data with these systems without the data being copied. Salesforce describes this also as Bring Your Own Lake (BYOL), referring to the term Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). I wanted to better understand the concept of Zero-ETL and illustrate it in an understandable way.

In this article, I’ll show you how you can create a simplified ETL process with Python to better understand this concept, what Zero-ETL or Zero-Copy means and how this new approach to data integration is implemented in the Salesforce Data Cloud.

Table of Content
1) Traditional ETL process: Step-by-step guide with Python for Beginners
2) So what is Zero-ETL?
3) Why Zero-ETL? Advantages and Disadvantages
4) What does Zero-ETL look like in the Salesforce Data Cloud?
5) Final Thoughts

If you are already familiar with the ETL and ELT processes, you can skip this section. If you are new to this topic, take a look at the super simplified example to better understand the Extract — Transform — Load process. Or even better, build it yourself — by applying it, you will usually understand the concepts better.