5 Signs Your Analytics Use Case Needs Real-Time OLAP
StartTree News, Tuesday, November 7,2023
Despite the increasing popularity of real-time analytics, also known as real-time online analytical processing (real-time OLAP, occasionally abbreviated as RTOLAP), few understand when to use it in their data stack. Some analytical queries can make due with traditional OLAP, while others truly need to run in a real-time OLAP database.
Real-time OLAP does all of the things OLAP does, but in real time. By this, we mean seconds or even sub-millisecond times - as fast as a web page or mobile app might update. In contrast, traditional OLAP might take minutes or hours for complex query results. Real-time OLAP aims to provide timely insights as soon as data is generated or ingested, handle streaming data sources, and continuously update analytical models to reflect the freshest data.
The question that many people ask comes down to this: When do I need to use a real-time OLAP data store? Not asking the question, or not knowing the answer when to switch to a real-time OLAP data store can put organizations at risk, costing the business time-to-market, savings through ROI, and opportunities to generate revenue. This is because the data store you're using may never achieve the SLAs required for the use case, even as the cost of the infrastructure needed to serve your users balloons beyond your budget.