Why data integration will never be fully solved, and what Fivetran, Airbyte, Singer, dlt and CloudQuery do about it

Data ingestion, a critical yet challenging task for data engineers, involves numerous complexities such as evolving schemas, API changes, and unexpected data volume fluctuations, often requiring manual intervention without much recognition. Several tools like Fivetran, Airbyte, Singer, CloudQuery, and dltHub have emerged to mitigate these challenges by offering different approaches to data integration. While no-code tools like Fivetran simplify the process for business users, they often lack the customization needed by engineers, which is where open-source solutions like Airbyte, CloudQuery, and dltHub come into play by allowing more flexibility and community contributions. Despite the advancements, the problem remains inherently unsolved due to commercial dynamics and the evolving nature of APIs, though emerging AI-powered tools may offer more scalable solutions in the future. Kestra, an event-driven orchestrator, partners with these tools to streamline the orchestration of data ingestion pipelines, demonstrating the progress facilitated by open-source communities in tackling these persistent challenges.