OLTP vs OLAP

OLTP:

In this section, we will take a look at two categories of database systems namely OLTP and OLAP.

OLTP:

OLTP (Online transaction processing) system, as the name suggests are transactional in nature. i.e. these systems involve read/write operations of live customer data. In such systems, generally, the storage (database) should be ACID in nature.

For instance, online banking system is an online transaction processing system, since it involves operations on live customer data.

OLAP:

OLAP (Online Analytical processing) systems generally operate on offline data. i.e. this data is generally a copy of the live data. Various statistical analyses are carried out on this data (also referred to as historical data) to extract value and meaning out of the data. These systems are also referred to as data warehouses.

The data is loaded onto these systems using batch processing or bulk operations like ETL (Extract, Transform and Load). Once loaded, these systems are read only in nature. The analytical operations derive meaning out of data, but do not modify the data. So these systems should be designed to be read efficient.

For instance, to analyze the banking customers spend patterns, the live customer data could be copied over to another system (OLAP system) to run the statistical analysis.