Data Pipeline

A data pipeline is an automated sequence of steps that moves and processes data from one or more sources to a destination, running on a schedule or triggered by events. Pipelines handle data movement so applications can rely on fresh, processed data without manual intervention.

A typical pipeline ingesting property data might call a search API every hour, compare results against the previous snapshot to identify new listings and price changes, normalize the responses, and insert updates into a database - all automatically.

The key attributes of a healthy pipeline are reliability (runs successfully every time), observability (failures are logged and alerted), and idempotency (running the same pipeline twice does not create duplicates). Building these properties in from the start saves significant debugging effort later.