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Data & Analytics · Foundational

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Systems optimized for complex, read-heavy queries that aggregate large volumes of historical data for analysis.

Definition

OLAP workloads scan many rows but few columns, so they benefit from columnar storage, denormalized star schemas and precomputed aggregates. OLAP operations include slice, dice, drill-down, roll-up and pivot.

Example

Analyzing five years of sales by region, product and month.

Exam tip

Reporting and BI over history means OLAP; capturing orders as they happen means OLTP.

Related terms