OLAP

OLAP Detailed Information

OLAP and OLTP

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) refers to a class of systems that facilitate and managetransaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval transaction processing.

On Line Analytical Processing (OLAP), a series of protocols used mainly for business reporting. Using OLAP, businesses can analyze data in all manner of different ways planning, simulation, data warehouse reporting, and trend analysis.

OLAP and OLTP are two absolutely different systems since they have different purpose and environments. OLAP for analytical compare to OLTP for transactional.

Difference between OLAP and OLTP

Target 

OLTP is used in operative environment to get efficiency through automation of businessprocesses. OLAP is used in informative environment, usually used by management to support in decisions making.

Priorities 

As transactional system, OLTP has high availability and higher data volume.OLAP as analytical system is very simple data and has flexible data access.

Level of detail

OLTP stores data in a very high level of detail, whereas OLAP stores data in aggregation.

Age of data 

OLTP data are current data. It means the data stored in OLTP with minimal history. OLAP data are historical data.

Database operation

Frequent data changes are a feature of operative system. So, in OLTP system we can read, add, change, delete or refresh data. In OLAP, we only can read the data since they are frozen after a certain point for analysis purpose.

Integration of data from various applications (system) 

Since the OLTP system is for operation, it has minimal integration with other applications. In contrast to the OLTP system, OLAP need high integration of information from many application or system because it used for analysis.

Normalization in database 

Due to reduction in data redundancy, normalization is very high requirement in OLTP. In OLAP, typically de-normalized with fewer tables; use of extended star schema and lower performance.