Online Transaction Processing vs. Decision Support

Online Transaction Processing

Online Transaction processing database applications are optimal for managing changing data, and usually have a large number of users who will be simultaneously performing transactions that change real-time data. The primary concerns in this type of application are concurrency and atomicity. Concurrency controls in a database system ensure that two users cannot change the same data, or that one user cannot change a piece of data before another user is done with it. Atomicity ensures that all of the steps involved in a transaction complete successfully as a group.

Online Transaction Processing Design Considerations

• Good data placement.
• Short transactions.
• Online backup.
• High normalization of the database.
• Little or no historical or aggregated data.
• Careful use of indexes.
• Optimum hardware configuration.

Decision Support

Decision-support database applications are optimal for data queries that do not change data.

Decision Support Design Considerations

• Heavy indexing.
• Denormalization of the database.
• Use of a star or snowflake schema.