Differences between OLTP and OLAP

Online Transaction Processing OLTP (on-line transaction processing)

OLTP is the main application of traditional relational databases, mainly for basic and daily transaction processing, such as bank transactions.

 

OLAP (on-line analytical processing)

OLAP is the main application of the data warehouse system. It supports complex analysis operations, focuses on decision support, and provides intuitive and easy-to-understand query results.

 

The following table lists the comparison between OLTP and OLAP:

	OLTP	OLAP
User	Operator and lower-level management personnel	Decision makers and senior management personnel
Function	Routine operations	Analysis and decision-making
DB Design	Application-oriented	Subject-oriented
Data	Current, latest, and two-dimensional discrete	Historical, aggregated, multi-dimensional, and unified
Access	Read/write dozens of records	Read millions of records
Work Unit	Simple transactions	Complex Query
DB size	100mb-gb	100gb-tb

 

In general, OLTP is oriented to our application system databases, and OLAP is oriented to data warehouses.