Guide to Zero ETL
Zero-ETL enables real-time data access without data movement. Learn how it simplifies integration, reduces latency, and scales analytics
Zero ETL lets you access data in disparate systems. without moving or copying it. Find out how it works and why it makes sense for your organization.
What is zero ETL?
Zero ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is a data integration approach that lets you access and query data where it resides, without moving or copying it. Enterprises store more and more data in various systems and applications but data gaps exist between these systems, making it difficult to access or integrate it for a unified view. This challenge is heightened in the age of agentic AI, where a foundation of trusted data is essential.
Automation, AI, and agentic AI require real-time access to data, but traditional integration methods including Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) and Extract, Load, Transform (ELT) protocols create latency and complexity. Read on to learn why zero ETL is a better option.
How zero ETL works
Zero ETL can create near real-time access to the source system, removing the need for middleware. Here’s how the process works:
- Change data capture (CDC): The source system generates an event each time data gets updated or changed.
- Native integration: The source system pushes a log of the change to the target system, for example a data lake or data warehouse.
- Schema translation: The target system recognizes the data types of the source automatically and handles schema mapping and data type conversions. The users see data that’s ready to be queried or analyzed in the destination system.
One key benefit of zero ETL is that it lets you query data in data silos without moving it.
Zero ETL vs. traditional ETL
Traditional ETL extracts data from the source system and loads it to the destination. You have to build custom pipelines for this to happen. During this process, data gets transformed – the “T” in ETL – so that it can be recognized and merged with the data in the destination system.
Zero ETL doesn’t move or copy data. It creates a native integration that continuously streams data changes to the destination system. It’s a great solution if you want to access data in the source system quickly and analyze or query it.
Benefits of zero ETL
Because of the way it is designed, without custom data pipelines, zero ETL gives your organization quick access to siloed data. Here are its key benefits.
Faster implementation and action with agentic AI
Zero ETL makes data available for AI analysis and agentic AI action in near-real time. Traditional ETL jobs can take days or weeks to design and can be prone to poor handling and performance.
Zero ETL increases your operational efficiency and helps your customer-facing teams take action faster with agentic AI that can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. For example, an e-commerce company can be adjusting inventory and pricing based on real-time sales data. AI sales agents can recommend available products to customers browsing the website in real time.
Cost savings
Zero ETL removes the need to build custom data pipelines to transfer data. You save on the technical and operational expenses and the costs of hiring the necessary experts if they’re not part of your IT teams. You also save on storage costs because the process doesn’t duplicate data.
Security and governance
Because zero ETL doesn’t move or copy data, it preserves the governance and security measures in your source systems. Zero ETL also reduces the risks that come anytime data is moved, when it is vulnerable to breaches.
Zero ETL use cases
Zero ETL has several advantages over traditional data movement technologies. Below are some of its key use cases.
Fraud detection
In industries such as financial services, one second can have a huge impact. Traditional ETL relies on batch processing. If a bank’s system extracts data every 5 minutes, a bad actor has enough time to act and hijack the system, spread malware, or drain an account.
Zero ETL detects and transmits changes immediately. The moment a withdrawal or login happens in the bank’s operational system, the data warehouse and AI can detect it and act.
Customer 360-degree views
When your customer data is spread in different systems, it is difficult to get a deeper understanding of what your customers are after and how their needs are changing.
Zero ETL can give your customer-facing employees a 360-degree view of your customers by combining sales, service, marketing, social, and web activity data in a CDP platform without the need to build custom pipelines for each data source.
Inventory management
Zero ETL can help manufacturers, retailers, and e-commerce companies access supply chain and inventory data without moving it. You can track how your inventory data changes, for example, and plan your supply chain so that products don’t run out of stock.
Access all your data with Data 360’s zero copy partner network
Salesforce brings zero-ETL capabilities with zero copy for Data 360, which removes the need for traditional ETL data replication to scale to meet diverse business and agentic AI needs. This means you can power all your applications with the freshest data—without costly, time-consuming data movement.
Zero ETL FAQs
Zero ETL is a data integration approach that gives you access to data in different source systems without moving or copying it.
Unlike traditional ETL and ELT processes, zero ETL doesn’t move or copy data from the source systems to a destination system. The data is accessible to you to query and act on in near real-time without custom data pipelines.
First, look at your business objectives and data strategy and to decide which solution fits you best. To transition to zero ETL, take stock of existing ETL pipelines, identify which systems they connect. Then create a plan for which pipelines you want to replace first. Not all systems support zero ETL. Then start with one zero ETL case before validating and expanding to others, implementing gradually.
Real-time dashboards, cloud migrations and customer-360 initiatives are great fits for zero ETL. Data can be accessed in the source systems, without expensive or time-consuming data pipelines, giving you access to the data you need in near real-time.