Which statement best describes OLTP and OLAP systems?

• A. OLTP handles transactional insert/update/delete with normalized schemas; OLAP supports analytics with read-optimized, denormalized schemas.
• B. OLTP is for analytics; OLAP for daily operations.
• C. OLTP uses denormalized schemas; OLAP uses normalized schemas.
• D. OLTP and OLAP are interchangeable terms.

Answer: (A)

The main idea is the distinct purposes and data models of OLTP and OLAP. OLTP systems handle everyday transactions—inserts, updates, and deletes on individual records—and rely on normalized schemas to minimize redundancy and preserve data integrity in highly concurrent environments. OLAP systems, on the other hand, are built for analytics and decision support; they run complex queries and aggregations over large historical datasets, so they use read-optimized, denormalized schemas (like star or snowflake schemas) to speed up joins and calculations.

This description captures the best answer because it correctly pairs transactional processing with normalized design and analytical processing with denormalized, read-optimized design. The other statements mix up roles (analytics vs daily operations), reverse normalization concepts, or claim the terms are interchangeable, which is not accurate.