How to learn faster — Apache Airflow

Gaurav Gurjar
5 min readFeb 10, 2023

Don’t worry I’m not going to drop the history of how what and when here.

By using analogies I can understand much faster. So, that’s what I’m sharing here.

Apache Airflow can be compared to a flight control center. Just as a flight control center manages the take-off, flight, and landing of multiple flights, Apache Airflow manages the execution, monitoring, and scheduling of multiple data pipelines.

In a flight control center, each flight is carefully planned and monitored, with steps taken to ensure that everything runs smoothly. Similarly, in Apache Airflow, each data pipeline is defined as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), which outlines the tasks to be performed and the order in which they should be executed.

Photo by Jorge Fernández Salas on Unsplash

Just as flight control centers use operators to manage flight operations, Apache Airflow uses Operators to perform specific tasks in a pipeline. And just as flight control centers use automated systems to manage and optimize flight operations, Apache Airflow uses automated systems to manage and optimize data pipelines.

Finally, just as flight control centers continuously monitor flight operations and make adjustments as needed, Apache Airflow continuously monitors data pipelines and allows you to make adjustments as needed, making it easier to ensure that your data…

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