DataCoolie — Metadata-driven ETL Framework

Metadata-driven ETL framework that unifies execution engines (Spark, Polars, and more in the future), remains cloud-agnostic (Fabric, AWS, Databricks, and more in the future), and currently focuses on batch workloads with a roadmap to micro-batch and streaming.

What problem does it solve?

Data teams often prototype pipelines locally, then rewrite the same pipeline for Spark and again for each cloud runtime. That duplicates ETL code and makes operational behavior such as watermarks, schema hints, partitions, load strategies, and maintenance drift across environments.

DataCoolie solves this by separating pipeline intent from execution details. You define connections, dataflows, transforms, and operational controls as metadata, then run the same intent on Polars or Spark and on local, Fabric, Databricks, or AWS platforms.

Why it helps

• Metadata-driven — pipeline behavior lives in metadata instead of being re-implemented in each job.
• Right-sized compute — small and medium jobs can stay on lighter runtimes like Polars or local execution instead of paying Spark or cluster overhead too early.
• Portable — the same metadata can move to Spark and cloud platforms when workloads grow.
• Engine-unified — the same metadata runs on Spark and Polars; swap at runtime.
• Cloud-agnostic — local, aws, fabric, databricks platforms abstract file I/O and secrets.
• Lakehouse-native — first-class Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg via fmt="delta" / fmt="iceberg".
• Operationally complete — watermarks, schema hints, partitions, load strategies, logging, and maintenance are built in.
• Extensible components — engines, platforms, sources, destinations, transformers, and secret resolvers use registries with Python entry-point discovery; built-ins are also registered in-process.

Start here

If you are evaluating DataCoolie for the first time, use this order:

1. Install the smallest useful runtime: pip install "datacoolie[polars,deltalake]"
2. Run the quick start below
3. Then move to the docs for using your own input and building a multi-stage flow

If you already know your runtime will be Spark, swap the install to pip install "datacoolie[spark,delta-spark]" and keep the same metadata pattern.

Installation

# Most common first install
pip install "datacoolie[polars,deltalake]"

# Spark-first local validation
pip install "datacoolie[spark,delta-spark]"

# Add stable hash_columns support to a Polars runtime
pip install "datacoolie[polars,deltalake,polars-hash]"

# Core only (mainly useful for extension work)
pip install datacoolie

# All engines
pip install datacoolie[all]

Quick Start

Install, then run two short scripts:

1. prepare_quickstart.py creates a sample CSV and metadata.json.
2. run_quickstart.py loads that metadata and runs the pipeline.

pip install "datacoolie[polars]"

Part 1 — Prepare sample data and metadata

# prepare_quickstart.py
import json
from pathlib import Path

root = Path("dc_quickstart")
(root / "input" / "orders").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
(root / "output").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

(root / "input/orders/orders.csv").write_text(
    "order_id,customer_id,amount\n1,100,19.99\n2,100,42.50\n3,101,7.25\n"
)

metadata = {
    "connections": [
        {"name": "csv_in", "connection_type": "file", "format": "csv",
         "configure": {"base_path": str(root / "input"),
                "read_options": {"header": "true", "inferSchema": "true"}}},
        {"name": "parquet_out", "connection_type": "file", "format": "parquet",
         "configure": {"base_path": str(root / "output")}},
    ],
    "dataflows": [
        {"name": "orders_csv_to_parquet", "stage": "bronze2silver",
         "processing_mode": "batch",
         "source": {"connection_name": "csv_in", "table": "orders"},
         "destination": {"connection_name": "parquet_out", "table": "orders",
                         "load_type": "full_load"},
         "transform": {}},
    ],
}
metadata_path = root / "metadata.json"
metadata_path.write_text(json.dumps(metadata, indent=2))
print(f"Created {metadata_path}")

python prepare_quickstart.py

Part 2 — Run the pipeline

# run_quickstart.py
from pathlib import Path

from datacoolie.engines.polars_engine import PolarsEngine
from datacoolie.platforms.local_platform import LocalPlatform
from datacoolie.metadata.file_provider import FileProvider
from datacoolie.orchestration.driver import DataCoolieDriver

root = Path("dc_quickstart")
metadata_path = root / "metadata.json"

platform = LocalPlatform()
engine = PolarsEngine(platform=platform)
provider = FileProvider(config_path=str(metadata_path), platform=platform)

with DataCoolieDriver(engine=engine, metadata_provider=provider) as driver:
    result = driver.run(stage="bronze2silver")
    print(f"Completed: {result.succeeded}/{result.total}")

python run_quickstart.py

Swap PolarsEngine for SparkEngine(spark_session=spark, ...) or LocalPlatform() for AWSPlatform / FabricPlatform / DatabricksPlatform — the metadata stays the same.

What to do next

• Use your own files while keeping the same runner pattern: https://datacoolie.github.io/datacoolie/getting-started/use-your-own-data/
• Build a multi-stage bronze→silver tutorial flow: https://datacoolie.github.io/datacoolie/getting-started/first-dataflow/
• Learn the metadata model field by field: https://datacoolie.github.io/datacoolie/how-to/metadata-guide/

AI-assisted project workflow

DataCoolie AI skills use {project_name}_dcws/ as the project control folder. That workspace contains its own AGENTS.md, discovery reports, stage-level architecture, metadata, generated deploy artifacts, and project-management gate journals.

The canonical workflow contract lives at ai/AGENTS.md. It requires human review gates for architecture, source2bronze, bronze2silver, silver2gold, and production deployment.

Testbed & scenarios

See usecase-sim/README.md for a ready-made integration testbed that exercises every {polars,spark} × {file,database,api} × {local,aws} combination, plus lakehouse maintenance and a Docker-compose backend stack.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later — free and open source.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution terms.