What does ETL stand for in data integration?

• A. Extract, Transform, Load
• B. Extract, Analyze, Load
• C. Analyze, Transform, Load
• D. Load, Transform, Extract

Answer: (A)

ETL stands for Extract, Transform, Load. This sequence captures the data integration process: you first pull data from various source systems (extract), then clean, normalize, and reshape it (transform) to fit the destination's structure, and finally place the prepared data into the target system, typically a data warehouse (load). The order matters because data must be prepared and standardized before it’s stored for reporting and analytics. The other options misname the middle step or reverse the order, which would not align with how ETL pipelines are designed.