The Beauty of HTAP: TiDB and AlloyDB as Examples

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For decades, Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) workloads have been processed separately by different database systems. This has been the norm because the two workloads differ in design factors such as latency, throughput, and data consistency. This is also why an individual database system may focus on either OLTP or OLAP workload. Take latency for example, an operational database usually requires very short latency but a data warehouse or a data lake system can tolerate much longer latency.

However, this also causes complicated technology stacks and data silos, which limit how fast companies can grow. This calls for a hybrid approach.

A Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing (HTAP) database can process OLTP and OLAP workloads in the same architecture without the workloads interfering with each other. Gartner coined this term in 2014 to refer to in-memory databases with hybrid workload processing capabilities, such as SAP HANA.

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