REDCap-ETL (REDCap Extract, Transform, Load) is an application that can extract data from REDCap, transform the extracted data, and load the transformed data into a database.
REDCap-ETL runs as a stand alone application outside of REDCap, and can require a fair amount of effort to set up. However, a REDCap external module for REDCap-ETL is now available that can be set up and run within REDCap. The setup effort for the REDCap-ETL external module is substantially less than for the REDCap-ETL application.
The REDCap-ETL external module is in the official external module repository (REDCap Repo), and you should be able to find and install it from within REDCap.
Even though the REDCap-ETL external module is substantially easier to set up and use, there are still several cases where you might want to use the REDCap-ETL application:
- It's not possible or practical to get the REDCap-ETL external module installed on your system
- You want to incorporate REDCap-ETL into an existing program or script
- You want to reduce the load on your REDCap server as much as possible
- You want to use the CSV or SQLite database types (these are currently only supported in the REDCap-ETL application)