Understanding the Differences Between OLTP and OLAP

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems handle daily business operations such as sales, registrations, and updates while focusing on individual and unique elements of data. These systems are designed for efficient processing to ensure timely updates and immediate synchronization. OLAP systems, on the other hand, focus on aggregating data to provide analysis and use distributed computing to scale across large datasets. While OLTP is application-centric with row-oriented databases optimized for transactional performance, OLAP is database-centric with columnar data stores in data warehouses designed for analytical processing. The choice between OLTP and OLAP systems depends on the specific needs of a business, with OLTP being suitable for frequent updates and OLAP for reporting and summarizing large datasets.