OLTP (Onliine Transaction Processing)
Operational access pattern: vast numbers of small, low latency point queries (a few records by key) plus inserts/updates/deletes, with a fixed query repertoire baked into app code.
What is it?
“Transaction” is a fossil from when writes meant money moving; now it means a logical unit of reads/writes (low-latency reads/writes in this chapter). OLTP: point queries by key, per-record writes, end users, fixed queries in code (users never type raw SQL — they’d read data they shouldn’t and one heavy query could ruin performance for everyone). Data represents latest current state; gigabytes to terabytes.
What I learned
The access pattern, not the data, defines OLTP. End users never writing their own SQL is a security and performance boundary, not a UX choice.
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