Flatirons Fuse as an ETL Data Migration Tool

As we’ve previously covered in our blog, migrating data is a difficult process, and there can be significant challenges when you simply dump data into a target system without context. Data migration will use either an ELT or ETL approach in most cases. ELT is a sort of ask-me-no-questions approach, where data of all types is extracted and loaded into a destination, usually a data lake. Any transformations of the data required for upstream systems and applications occur after the data is loaded. This approach can be faster, particularly for things like data streaming use cases (moving a large volume of unstructured, structured, and raw data), but is often not feasible for smaller datasets requiring complex transformations. Or even not-so-complex transformations.

Transform and Load

Flatirons Fuse is a Flatfile alternative and a CSVBox competitor, focused on the transformation and loading part of the ETL process, and further focused on CSV as a method of transforming and loading said data. Regardless of whether a target system uses CSV natively or not, it is often the best means to transmit tabular data from one system to another, because it is so commonly recognized by systems worldwide. 

Flatirons Fuse serves as an ETL tool and helps to provide a seamless, white-labeled solution for any application that needs to import CSV data for use in their application or website. It can serve as the staging area for your ETL process, allowing you to import data from customers whose systems may not be compatible with your native coding language. Nearly every database solution offers an option to export to CSV. CSV is the perfect bridge format for loading tabular data.

Why Flatirons Fuse?

For you, no charge

This is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Or is it the zero-dollar question? One strong reason is that it is free to try and free to use unless you exceed 10000 records a month. But free is not an incentive if you don’t know what the free solution does for you.

Simple and Flexible

The CSV format, while designed to be simple, is poorly standardized and has multiple versions, each with its own limitations and complexities. Even if you limit imports to the latest version (UTF-8), it is far from simple to build your own solution that can define the data to be transmitted, create, and manage multiple data templates for different target systems, and validate the data. 

Flatirons Fuse provides a low-code, minimal programming solution that lets you get set up in minutes, allowing developers to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Front-end Validations

Errors are inevitable. Whether they occur due to user error, unrecognized characters, missing data, or any number of other issues that can occur, it can be a challenge to find these issues if all you have available is your own fallible eyes. With our front-end validation, you can find required data that is missing, incomplete email addresses, and any number of issues during the upload process. 

Flatirons Fuse even lets you define your own front-end validations on any uploaded CSV format, providing a bulletproof system for submitting data to your backend.

Back-end Validations

As stated, errors are inevitable, and a challenge to find. If an issue occurs on the back-end, customers often have no idea, and therefore no opportunity to fix it. With our back-end validation support, we give our customers not only the knowledge that there is a problem, but also how to fix it.

Multiple File Formats

Flatirons Fuse is not just a CSV import solution. It also handles many of the common variations, such as TSV. It is also a spreadsheet importer, offering compatibility with Excel files, such as .XLS and .XLSX. The ETL process becomes simpler with format flexibility.

Data Transformation

In addition to several validations, we provide in our default configuration, such as email format, we also provide the means to enforce specific format rules and transformations via initializations and hooks.  With just a few lines of code, you can implement a rule to ensure that postal codes are formatted correctly (ie letters capitalized, numbers, and 6 characters with a space between). Or simply set a transformation that ensures all entries in the column labelled ‘City’ are capitalized. Zip Codes can be limited to numerical values consisting of 5 digits. The possibilities are endless, for both custom validations and transformations. Let us know what you need, and we will help you make it happen.

White-labeled and Customizable

Just because you’ve integrated a third-party solution for CSV import, it doesn’t mean you want it to be obvious. In fact, the ideal goal of using Software as a Service for your imports is that it is not noticed at all. It is just a part of your solution set. Flatirons Fuse offers the capability to white-label our importer, to match your branding with your logo and custom colors. 

Simple and Intuitive

All the above is simple and easy to configure in minutes. Our Get Started menu clearly outlines the steps to creating a template, testing it, and configuring branding and colors. Even initializations and hooks are simple to implement via a few simple lines of JavaScript code.

Transform and Load Made Easy

As you know, the transform and load portions of the ETL process are where the bulk of problems lie, and a good CSV importer can remove them as a factor. Flatirons Fuse can ensure that getting tabular data from point A to point B is simple, easy, and intuitive. Whatever you need to move, whatever you need to transform, to load, let us help you get it where it needs to be.