Extract, Transform and Load

Operational database structures are best suited to short running transactions. Analytical queries are often handled by data warehouses in which the data is structured better to support complex queries. The process of moving data from the operational databases to the data warehouse is called ETL: Extract Transform, and load. Because the data structures are often multi-dimensional cubes, this activity is often called cube-building.

Cube building presents an operational challenge because the data structures require considerable manipulation, and so the ETL process may run for a long time. Customers have come to WireCache to solve this problem. Because queries run many times faster against the WireCache appliance than against the underlying database, a WireCache appliance can cut cube building time in half or even more. In many cases this has resulted in ETL processes that were about to exceed the available time window being brought well under control.