OLTP and OLAP

Abstract:

Data warehouse, online transaction processing system (OLTP) and on-line analytical
processing (OLAP) are basically main need of the database collection in business, corporate
fields and many areas. Nowadays many services, products and new techniques are available and
offering many ideas in the DBMS. This paper is research about the data warehousing with OLAP
and OLTP with the basic need and main parts of the business database management. The main
here consider that Data warehouse usage, process, Data warehouse with Meta data, online
transaction processing system (OLTP), on-line analytical processing (OLAP) and also OLTP vs.
OLAP with advantages and disadvantages

Introduction

OLTP, OLAP, Meta data and Data warehouse are essential elements of supports system,
which has increasingly become a focus of the database industry. Many commercial
products and services are now available, and all of principal database management
system providers now offerings in these areas. Decision support places some different
requirements on database technology compared to traditional on – line transaction
processing applications
1.2 Metadata

Meta data is “data about data” or Meta data is “the data used to define other data”. It specifies
source, values, usage and features of DWH data and defines how data can be changed and processed at
every architecture layer. Meta data is stored in a Meta data repository which all the other architecture
components can access. Meta data is a critical need for using, building, and administering the data
warehouse. For end users, metadata is like a roadmap to the data warehouse contents. A Meta data
repository is like a general-purpose.

information directory that includes several enhancing functions.

According to Kelly, a tool for Meta data management should:

 Allow administrator to perform system administration operations, and manage

security.
 Allow end users to navigate and query Meta data.  Allow end users to uses a
GUI.
 Allow end users to extend Meta data.  Allow Meta data to be imported /
exported into from other standard and formats.
1.3 OLTP:

The online operational Database System that performs online transaction and query
processing is called on – Line transaction Processing (OLTP) systems. Ex. “Day to day”
operations of organizations, such as purchasing, inventory, manufacturing, banking, payroll
registration, and accounting.

OLTP (On-line 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).

1.4 OLAP:

Data warehouse serve users and knowledge in the role of data analysis and decision
making. Such systems can organize & present data in various formats as per needs of different
users. These systems are known as on – line analytical processing (OLAP) systems.

OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing) is characterized by relatively low volume of transactions.

Queries are often very complex and involve aggregations. For OLAP systems a response time is an
effectiveness measure. OLAP applications are widely used by Data Mining techniques.
In OLAP database there is aggregated, historical data, stored in multi-dimensional schemas (usually
star schema).
1.5 Data Warehouse:

According to Barry Devlin, a single, complete and consistent store of data obtained from
a variety of different sources made available to end users in a way they can understand and use in
a business context.
2. Research Methodology

2.1 Data Warehouse Usage

 Data warehouses and data marts are used in a wide range of applications.

 Business executives use the data in data warehouses and data marts to perform data
analysis and make strategic decisions.

 In many areas, data warehouses are used as an integral part for enterprise
management.

 The data warehouse is mainly used for generating reports and answering predefined
queries.

 It is used to analyze summarized and detailed data, where the results are presented in
the form of reports and charts.

 Later, the data warehouse is used for strategic purposes, performing multidimensional
analysis and sophisticated operations.

 Finally, the data warehouse may be employed for knowledge discovery and strategic
decision making using data mining tools.

 In this context, the tools for data warehousing can be categorized into access and
retrieval tools, database reporting tools, data analysis tools, and data mining tools [3].

2.2 Need for Data Warehousing:

 Industry has huge amount of operational data.

 It is a platform for consolidated historical data for analysis.

 It stores data of good quality so that knowledge worker can make correct / strategic
decisions.
  Better business intelligence for end-users.

 Reduction in time to locate, access, and analyze information.

 Consolidation of disparate information sources.

 Strategic advantage over competitors.

 Faster time-to-market for products and services.

 Replacement of older, less-responsive decision support systems.

 Reduction in demand on IS to generate reports.

2.3 The Process of Data Warehouse Design:

A DWH can be built using a Top – Down Approach, Bottom - Up Approach or

combination of both.

Top – Down Approach:

The top – down approach start with the overall design and planning. It is useful in
cases where the technology is mature and well known, and the business problems that
must be solved are clear and well understood.

Bottom – Up Approach:

The bottom up approach starts with experiments and prototypes. This is useful in
the early stage of business modeling and technology development. It allows organizations
to move forward at considerably less expense and to evaluate the benefits of the
technology before making significant commitments. Combined Approach: In the
combined approach, an organization can exploit the planned and strategic nature if the
Top – down approach while retaining the rapid implementation and opportunistic application
of Bottom up approach.

The design and construction of data warehouse may consist of the following steps:

1. Planning
 2. Requirements study
3. Problem Analysis
4. Warehouse Design
5. Data integration
6. Testing and
7. Deployment of the data warehouse.

2.3 Software systems can be developed using two methodologies:

Waterfall method and Spiral method:

The waterfall method performs a structured and systematic analysis at each step
before proceeding to the next, which is like a waterfall, falling from one step to next. The
spiral method involves the rapid generation of increasingly functional systems, with short
intervals between successive releases. This is considered a good choice for data
warehouse development, like for data marts, because the turnaround time is short,
modifications can be quickly, and new designs and technologies can be adapted in a
timely manner.

So, the warehouse Design process consists of following steps:

1.] Business process model: For example, orders, invoices, shipments, inventory,
account administration and sales. If the business process us organizational and involve
multiple complex object collections, a data warehouse model should be followed.

2.] Choose the grain of the business process: The grain is the fundamental atomic
level of data to be represented in the fact table for this process, for example, individual
truncations, individual daily snapshots, and so on.

3.] Choose the dimensions: That will apply to each fact table record. Typical
dimension are time, item, customer, supplier, warehouse, transaction type, and status.

4.] Choose the measures: That will populate each fact table record. Typical
measures are numeric additive quantities like dollars sold and units sold.
2.4 The major feature between OLTP & OLAP:

1. User and system orientation: Clerks, clients and information technology

professionals use OLTP systems and it is customer_ oriented whereas the OLAP is
market-oriented used by knowledge workers, analysis and managers.

2. Data contents: An OLTP system manages current data and is not used for
decision making purposes. An OLAP manages large amounts of historical data with
facilities for Summerton and aggregation.

3. Database design: An OLTP system usually adopts an Entity relationship model

and an application oriented database design.

An OLAP system uses a star or a snowflake model.

4. View: An OLTP system works on the current data within organization, without
using historical data in different organizations. An OLAP systems deal with information
that originates from different organizations, adding information from many data stores.
Because of their huge volume, OLAP data are stored on multiple storage media.

5. Access Patterns: The Access Patterns of an OLTP system consist of Short,

atomic transactions. Such a system requires concurrency control and recovery
mechanisms. Accesses to OLAP systems are read only operations.

2.5 OLAP

 Logically, OLAP servers present business users with multidimensional data from DW or data
marts, without concerns regarding how or where the data are stored.

 So an OLAP Server is a high capacity, multi user data manipulation engine specifically
designed to support and operate on multi-dimensional data structure.

 However, physical architecture and implementation of OLAP servers must consider data
storage issues.

 OLAP stands for On-Line Analytical Processing.

 The key feature is "Multidimensional", the ability to analyze metrics in different dimensions
such as time, geography, gender, product, etc.
  Implementations of a warehouse server for OLAP processing include the following

 MOLAP (Multidimensional OLAP) and ROLAP (Relational OLAP) and Hybrid OLAP (HOLAP).

2.6 OLAP Types:

1. Relational OLAP (ROLAP) servers:

 These are intermediate servers that stand in between a relational back-end server and
client front-end tools.

 They use a relational or extended-relational DBMS to store and manage warehouse

data, and OLAP middleware to support missing pieces.

 ROLAP servers include optimization for each DBMS back end, implementation of
aggregation navigation logic, and additional tools and services.

 ROLAP technology tends to have greater scalability than MOLAP technology.

 The DSS server of Micro strategy, for example, adopts the ROLAP approach.

Advantages:

 Can handle large amounts of data: The data size limitation of ROLAP technology is
depends on data size of the underlying RDBMS. So, ROLAP itself places no limitation on data
amount.

 Can leverage functionalities inherent in the relational database: RDBMS already comes
with a lot of functionalities. So ROLAP technologies, (works on top of the RDBMS) can control
these functionalities.

Disadvantages:

 Performance can be slow: Each ROLAP report is a SQL query (or multiple SQL
queries) in the relational database, the query time can be long if the underlying data size is large.

 Limited by SQL functionalities: ROLAP technology relies on generating SQL

statements to query the relational database, and SQL statements do not fit all needs.
  ROLAP technologies are limited by what SQL can do. ROLAP vendors moderate this
risk by building the tool with ability.

2. Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP) servers:

 These servers support multidimensional views of data through array-based

multidimensional storage engines. They map multidimensional views directly to data cube array
structures.

 Advantage of using data cube is that it allows fast indexing to pre-computed

summarized data.

 With multidimensional data stores, storage utilization may be low if data set is sparse.

 In such cases, sparse matrix compression techniques should be explored. Many

MOLAP servers adopt a 2-level storage representation to handle dense and sparse data sets:
denser sub cubes are identified and stored as array structures, whereas sparse sub cubes employ
compression technology for efficient storage utilization.

Advantages:

 Excellent Performance: A MOLAP cube is built for fast data retrieval, and is optimal
for Slicing and Dicing operations.

 Can perform complex calculations: All calculations have been pre-generated when the
cube is created. Hence, complex calculations are not only feasible, but they return quickly.

Disadvantages:

 Limited in the amount of data it can handle: Because all calculations are performed
when the cube is built, it is not possible to include a large amount of data in the cube itself.

 The data in cube cannot be derived from a large amount of data. Indeed, this is
possible.

 Only summary-level information will be included in the cube itself.

 Requires additional investment: Cube technology is often proprietary and does not
already exist in the organization. Therefore, to adopt MOLAP technology, chances are additional
investments in human and capital resources are needed.

3. Hybrid OLAP (HOLAP) servers:

The hybrid OLAP approach combines ROLAP and MOLAP technology,

benefiting from the greater scalability of ROLAP and the faster computation of MOLAP.

 For example, a HOLAP server may allow large volumes of detail data to be
stored in a relational database, while aggregations are kept in a separate MOLAP store.
The Microsoft SQL Server 2000 supports a hybrid OLAP server.

 HOLAP technologies attempt to combine the advantages of MOLAP and

ROLAP.

 For summary-type information, HOLAP leverages cube technology for faster

performance.

When detail information is needed, HOLAP can "drill through" from the cube
into the underlying relational data.

3. OLTP vs. OLAP

We can divide IT systems into transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP). In general
we can assume that OLTP systems provide source data to data warehouses, whereas OLAP
systems help to analyze it.

Figure 2: The above diagram shows the OLTP and OALP operations performance
and how is difference both with Business processes and Business Data Warehouse [7].
3.1 OLTP [On-line Transaction Processing] is characterized by a large number of short on-line
transactions (INSERT, UPDATE, and 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).

3.2 OLAP [On-line Analytical Processing] is characterized by relatively low volume of

transactions. Queries are often very complex and involve aggregations. For OLAP systems a
response time is an effectiveness measure. OLAP applications are widely used by Data Mining
techniques. In OLAP database there is aggregated, historical data, stored in multi-dimensional
schemas (usually star schema). The following table summarizes the major differences between
OLTP and OLAP system design.

Comparison Chart

BASIS FOR
OLTP OLAP
COMPARISON

Basic It is an online transactional It is an online data retrieving and

system and manages database data analysis system.

modification.

Focus Insert, Update, Delete Extract data for analyzing that helps

information from the database. in decision making.

Data OLTP and its transactions are Different OLTPs database becomes

the original source of data. the source of data for OLAP.

 BASIS FOR
OLTP OLAP
COMPARISON

Transaction OLTP has short transactions. OLAP has long transactions.

Time The processing time of a The processing time of a transaction

transaction is comparatively less is comparatively more in OLAP.

in OLTP.

Queries Simpler queries. Complex queries.

Normalization Tables in OLTP database are Tables in OLAP database are not

normalized (3NF). normalized.

Integrity OLTP database must maintain OLAP database does not get

data integrity constraint. frequently modified. Hence, data

integrity is not affected.

4. CONCLUSION

In Database management system multiple requirements are available and include new
business techniques. In above discussion we see that the Business Database management and
Data warehousing depended on the performance of Meta data, OLTP and OLAP performance. In
the data warehousing move toward, information is requested, processed, and merged
continuously, so the information is readily available for direct querying OLAP and analysis at
the warehouse.