Data warehouse versus OLTP database
WHAT IT TESTS: OLAP versus OLTP design. OUTLINE: warehouses use columnar storage for analytical scans, OLTP uses row storage for fast transactions, each fits a different workload. RED FLAG: a warehouse for high-volume single-row writes, or vice versa.
WHAT IT TESTS: why analytical and transactional systems are built differently. ANSWER OUTLINE: contrast columnar storage in warehouses, which scans few columns over billions of rows efficiently, against row storage in OLTP, which reads and writes whole records fast. Warehouses favor large scans, aggregations, and bulk loads with separated compute and storage; OLTP favors many small concurrent ACID transactions and point lookups. RED FLAG: a warehouse for per-request writes, or heavy analytics on the OLTP primary.
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- #olap
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- #bigquery
- #redshift
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