OLTP System
Online Transaction Processing
(Operational System)

OLAP System
Online Analytical Processing
(Data Warehouse)

Source of data

Operational data; OLTPs are the original source of the data.

Consolidation data; OLAP data comes from the various OLTP Databases

Purpose of data

To control and run fundamental business tasks

To help with planning, problem solving, and decision support

What the data

Reveals a snapshot of ongoing business processes

Multi-dimensional views of various kinds of business activities

Inserts and Updates

Short and fast inserts and updates initiated by end users

Periodic long-running batch jobs refresh the data

Queries

Relatively standardized and simple queries Returning relatively few records

Often complex queries involving aggregations

Processing Speed

Typically very fast

Depends on the amount of data involved; batch data refreshes and complex queries may take many hours; query speed can be improved by creating indexes

Space Requirements

Can be relatively small if historical data is archived

Larger due to the existence of aggregation structures and history data; requires more indexes than OLTP

Database Design

Highly normalized with many tables

Typically de-normalized with fewer tables; use of star and/or snowflake schemas

Backup and Recovery

Backup religiously; operational data is critical to run the business, data loss is likely to entail significant monetary loss and legal liability

Instead of regular backups, some environments may consider simply reloading the OLTP data as a recovery method