This is a regular “data quiz”. Follow it on LinkedIn. Test your knowledge or learn something new.
Today Question:
Which tool is typically used for ETL?
A) Airflow
B) Grafana
C) Superset
D) Looker
Correct Answer: A
Explanation
Apache Airflow is an open-source workflow orchestration platform that has become the de facto standard for managing ETL and data pipeline processes. Airflow enables defining, scheduling, and monitoring complex data workflows using Python code. The key concept is DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs), which represent tasks and their dependencies. Each task in a DAG is defined as an Operator, which can represent a Python function, a bash command, an SQL query, or integration with external services. Airflow provides a rich web interface for monitoring, task management, dependency visualization, and performance analysis. It supports retry logic, alerting, parallel task execution, and scaling across multiple worker nodes. Unlike Grafana (visualization), Superset (BI tool), and Looker (modern BI), which focus on analytics and data visualization, Airflow is specialized in orchestrating data processes and automating ETL pipelines.