Comparison between OLTP and OLAP systems are as follows – OLAP vs OLTP
| Feature | OLTP | OLAP |
|---|---|---|
| Full form | Online transaction Processing | Online analytical processing |
| Characteristic | operational Processing | informational processing |
| Orientation | transaction | analysis |
| User | clerk, DBA, transaction database professional | knowledge worker (e.g., manager, executive, analyst) |
| Function | day-to-day operations | long-term informational requirements, decision support |
| DB design | ER-based, application-oriented | star/snowflake, subject-oriented |
| Data | current guaranteed up-to-date | historical; accuracy maintained over time. |
| Summarization | primitive, highly detailed | summarized, consolidated |
| View | detailed, flat relational | summarized, multidimensional |
| Unit of work | short, simple transaction | complex query |
| Access | read/write | mostly read |
| Focus | data in | information out |
| Operations Number of records | index/hash on primary key | lots of scans |
| accessed | tens | millions |
| Number of users | thousands | hundreds |
| DB size | 100 MB to GB | 100 GB to TB |
| Priority | high performance, high availability | high flexibility end-user autonomy. |
| Metric | transaction throughput | query throughput, response time |