OLTP
Summary: Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) refers to database access patterns characterized by a large volume of low-latency requests that typically touch a small number of records.
Sources: chapter3
Last updated: 2026-04-15
Characteristics
OLTP systems are usually user-facing and interactive. Key characteristics include:
- Read Pattern: Small number of records per query, fetched by key (source: chapter3).
- Write Pattern: Random-access, low-latency writes from user input (source: chapter3).
- Dataset Size: Typically gigabytes to terabytes (source: chapter3).
- Constraint: Disk seek time is often the primary bottleneck (source: chapter3).
Storage Engines
OLTP databases traditionally use b-trees for indexing, though log-structured engines like lsm-trees are increasingly popular (source: chapter3).