Online analytical processing (OLAP) is software technology you can use to analyze business data from different points of view.
Organizations collect and store data from multiple data sources, such as websites, applications, smart meters, and internal systems.
Databases such as Oracle Database Server, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL are row-oriented database systems.
These systems have been traditionally used for data warehousing, but they are better suited for transactional processing (OLTP) than for analytics.
The primary purpose of online analytical processing (OLAP) is to analyze aggregated data, while the primary purpose of online transaction processing (OLTP) is to process database transactions.
You use OLAP systems to generate reports, perform complex data analysis, and identify trends.