Data Warehouse
* Designed for analysis of business measures by categories and attributes
* Optimized for bulk loads and large, complex, unpredictable queries that access many rows per table
* Loaded with consistent, valid data; requires no real time validation
* Supports few concurrent users
* Data changes infrequently
OLTP
* Designed for real time business operations
* Optimized for a common set of transactions, usually adding or retrieving a single row at a time
* Optimized for validation of incoming data during transactions; uses validation data tables
* Supports thousands of concurrent users
* Data changes constantly