What is OLAP? Analytical databases
Online analytical processing (OLAP) databases are purpose-built for handling analytical queries. Analytical queries run on online transaction-processing (OLTP) databases often take a long time to return answers. There are several reasons for this.First, OLTP databases are usually in third normal form, so that analytical queries have to perform complex JOIN operations on many tables, which can be computationally expensive. Second, OLTP databases tend to have relatively few indexes, to optimize write speed, while read-heavy analytical queries often benefit from additional indexes. Third, OLTP databases tend to be constantly busy with small transactions, which can cause contention (mostly for indexes) while long analytical queries are running, slowing down both the transactions and the queries.To read this article in full, please click here
Online analytical processing (OLAP) databases are purpose-built for handling analytical queries. Analytical queries run on online transaction-processing (OLTP) databases often take a long time to return answers. There are several reasons for this.
First, OLTP databases are usually in third normal form, so that analytical queries have to perform complex JOIN operations on many tables, which can be computationally expensive. Second, OLTP databases tend to have relatively few indexes, to optimize write speed, while read-heavy analytical queries often benefit from additional indexes. Third, OLTP databases tend to be constantly busy with small transactions, which can cause contention (mostly for indexes) while long analytical queries are running, slowing down both the transactions and the queries.
