DataX

DataX is a data integration framework originally developed by Alibaba and released as open-source. It enables moving data between different data stores and processing systems, supporting ETL and data migration tasks in large-scale environments. The system uses a plug-in architecture built around readers (source connectors) and writers (destination connectors). New data sources and targets are added by implementing appropriate reader or writer plugins, allowing the framework to interface with relational databases, data warehouses, distributed file systems, and NoSQL stores.

A DataX job is described in a configuration file that specifies the source, destination, data format, and, optionally, transformation steps. The execution engine runs the job by creating parallel tasks that read from the source and write to the target, enabling scalable data transfer. DataX provides fault tolerance through retry logic and logs for monitoring, and it can handle both batch transfers and ongoing data movement in some setups.

Common use cases include database migrations, data warehouse loading, data lake ingestion, and cross-system replication. It is commonly employed in big data stacks to bridge heterogeneous technologies and data formats. The project has a broad ecosystem of connectors and has inspired forks and derivatives within the data engineering community. While not every data source is guaranteed to be supported out of the box, DataX remains a reference architecture for plug-in based data transfer and continues to influence similar tools in the ecosystem.