Between OLAP and OLTP: Which System is Best?

OLAP focuses primarily on analyzing aggregated data, while OLTP focuses on processing transactions on the database.

Between OLAP and OLTP: Which System is Best? Picture 1 Between OLAP and OLTP: Which System is Best? Picture 1

Two terms that are often mentioned in the field of BI are OLAP and OLTP. While OLAP is often used in reporting and data analysis, OLTP is used to store and process daily transaction information. So what is the difference between the two systems OLAP and OLTP? Let's find out with TipsMake in the article below.

What is OLAP?

OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) is a technology that performs high-speed complex queries or multidimensional analysis on large volumes of data in a data warehouse, data lake, or other data repository. OLAP is used in Business Intelligence (BI), decision support, and many other business reporting and forecasting applications.

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What is OLAP?

OLAP is widely used in business and finance. These are industries that often have to process and analyze large amounts of data to make business decisions. In addition, OLAP systems are also used in other fields such as insurance, customer information management, and market analysis.

OLAP cubes contain different dimensions of data, each representing an attribute. Users can view data in multiple dimensions by moving back and forth between dimensions to understand trends, relationships, and hidden information in the data.

What is OLTP?

OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) is a system specializing in online analysis, supporting in-depth and multi-dimensional data analysis. OLAP is applied in many fields such as insurance, customer information management, market analysis. OLAP will focus on organizing data to optimize the process of querying and analyzing data from many angles.

In addition to everyday formal transactions such as ATM withdrawals and hotel reservations, OLTP is also capable of performing non-financial transactions such as changing passwords and sending text messages. In addition, OLTP is also used to perform tasks such as:

Handles relatively simple tasks such as inserting, updating, and deleting data.
Ensures data accuracy and integrity even when multiple users access it at the same time.
Quickly resolve issues in milliseconds.
Provides data filters, supports quick searching, querying, and exporting data.
Continuous data backup.

OLAP vs OLTP Comparison

Type of treatment

OLAP focuses primarily on analyzing aggregated data, while OLTP focuses on processing transactions on a database. OLAP is often used when creating reports, analyzing complex data, and identifying trends. In contrast, OLTP is often used when processing orders, managing inventory, or tasks related to managing customer accounts.

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OLAP vs OLTP Comparison

Differences between OLAP and OLTP

Which system is best?

Which system is best between OLAP and OLTP will depend on the specific goals and needs of the organization. OLAP is suitable for big data analysis, providing valuable information from huge volumes of data. In contrast, OLTP is optimized for daily transaction management, quickly processing large numbers of transactions per hour.

In many cases, businesses may consider a combination of both OLAP and OLTP systems to meet their transaction processing and data analysis needs efficiently. Ultimately, choosing between these systems requires consideration of data volume, query complexity, response time, scalability, and cost.

Hopefully, through the above information about OLAP and OLTP that TipsMake shared, readers have clearly understood the differences between these two systems.