Sunday, 7 October 2012

What is OLTP



Online transaction processing is characterized by a large number of short on-line transactions (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE). The main emphasis for OLTP systems is put on very fast query processing, maintaining data integrity in multi-access environments and an effectiveness measured by number of transactions per second. In OLTP database there is detailed and current data, and schema used to store transactional databases is the entity model (usually 3NF).

Requirements

OLTP is a methodology to provide end users with access to large amounts of data in an intuitive and rapid manner to assist with deductions based on investigative reasoning.

Online transaction processing increasingly requires support for transactions that span a network and may include more than one company. For this reason, new online transaction processing software uses client or server processing and brokering software that allows transactions to run on different computer platforms in a network.

In large applications, efficient OLTP may depend on sophisticated transaction management software (such as CICS) and/or database optimization tactics to facilitate the processing of large numbers of concurrent updates to an OLTP-oriented database.

For even more demanding Decentralized database systems, OLTP brokering programs can distribute transaction processing among multiple computers on a network. OLTP is often integrated into service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services.

Benefits

Online Transaction Processing has two key benefits: simplicity and efficiency. Reduced paper trails and the faster, more accurate forecasts for revenues and expenses are both examples of how OLTP makes things simpler for businesses.

Difference between OLTP and OLAP



Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)
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

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