OLTP - Operational Database

Online Transaction Processing

More on day-to-day transactions

  • Purpose: Support daily transactions
  • Design: Application-oriented
  • Data: Up-to-date, operational
  • Size: Snapshot, gigabytes
  • Queries: Simple transactions & frequent updates
  • Users: thousands

OLAP - Data Warehouse

Online Analytical Processing

More on overall decision making

  • Purpose: Report and analyze data
  • Data: Subject-oriented
  • Design: Consolidated, historical
  • Size: Archive, terabytes
  • Queries: Complex, aggregate queries & limited updates
  • Users: Hundreds