Glue ETL

Glue ETL is a fully managed ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) service by AWS, designed to facilitate data ingestion, cleaning, and transformation for analytical or artificial intelligence environments. AWS Glue Data Catalog enables centralized data cataloging, simplifying analysis and integration with other AWS services such as S3, Redshift, or Athena. With its Apache Spark-based engine, Glue ETL provides high scalability for batch processing.  

Glue ETL includes orchestration features (triggers, scheduling), but they are less flexible than those of Airflow, which we recommend using alongside it. Glue ETL integrates well with Airflow, and by using Airflow as an orchestrator to trigger Glue jobs, it is possible to leverage advanced alerting and monitoring capabilities. Data transformations are defined within Glue jobs, benefiting from its native integration with AWS services and optimized execution capabilities. This combination ensures efficient and scalable ETL pipeline management while improving visibility and control over data processing workflows.  

However, Glue ETL has limitations in governance and transformation tracking. Pipeline versioning requires manual configuration, and dependencies between processes lack flexibility. Additionally, as is often the case with highly managed services, developing workflows in a simple and locally executable manner remains challenging.  

Theodo’s point of view  

Due to its limitations in governance and flexibility for managing pipelines, we do not recommend using Glue ETL. Despite its compatibility with Airflow, the challenges related to manual versioning and rigid dependencies make it less optimal. We suggest evaluating these aspects before adopting Glue ETL or considering alternative solutions.