Data Usage Challenges

Data Usage Challenges

• Database start out as oltp.
• Olap functionality becomes a need as data accumulates

Usually we use OLTP for our business, but as our business grow larger, and so as our data, it become really hard to manage the data. In large business usually our data is in mega bytes, different types of data is contained in many tables related to each other. Sometimes our data is consisted of 100’s of tables. And when we need to retrieve data, we have to use as many joins as our tables are. So it become very difficult in large businesses. The data in each table is years old that becomes a part of history and we needed it once a year. That is the time when we need an OLAP. An OLAP is periodically loaded with data from OLTP.

As business grow and so as the data, Two database structure become necessity where the OLTP captures and manages daily transiction. We may have many users updating and managing tables of the databases. And an OLAP is loaded periodically with the data from OLTP.

Lets understand the difference between the OLTP and OLAP, and why each one is needed.

Above the diagram of the different tables of an OLTP database. As we see the tables are inter connected, and to get the data we have to make queries with multiple joins. But in large bussiness we may have more tables related to each other in some way so it becomes very difficult to make queries with joins. So we loaded the old historical data into a warehouse.

Above is the diagram of the OLAP and we can see the difference between the tables and their relationship. We have a main table connected to other tables. So it become very easy to manage the data. There are no joining involve in the queries.