HTAP
Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing
ELI5 - The Vibe Check
For decades you needed two separate databases, one tuned for fast transactions (OLTP) and a totally different one tuned for big analytical queries (OLAP), with a nightly job dragging data between them. HTAP databases try to do both jobs in the same system at the same time, so your analytics queries see live data instead of yesterday's copy.
Real Talk
HTAP describes database systems that handle both high-throughput transactional workloads and complex analytical queries on the same data, without a separate ETL step into a data warehouse. Systems like TiDB, SingleStore, and CockroachDB achieve this by combining row-based storage for transactions with columnar storage or replicas for analytics, kept in sync in near real time.
When You'll Hear This
"We moved to an HTAP database so the dashboard doesn't lag a day behind production." / "HTAP sounds great until you see what it does to write latency."
Related Terms
Apache Parquet
Parquet is a file format that stores your data by column instead of by row, which sounds boring until you realize most analytics queries only touch a handf...
OLAP
OLAP is all about analyzing huge amounts of data to answer business questions. 'What were total sales by region last quarter?' That's an OLAP query.
OLTP
OLTP is the workhorse behind every app. It handles fast, small transactions: creating users, placing orders, updating profiles.
TimescaleDB
You love Postgres but your IoT sensors are writing a million rows per second.