OLTP vs OLAP: decide when a report needs its own warehouse

Why can't I just query the app's database?

BeginnerRead 4 minDoing: half an hour to an hour, mostly comparing numbers you already have5 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

A one-page note recording the choice and the specific risk it avoids

Before you start

You need

A report that runs as a scheduled query straight against your live application database, and read access to that database's slow-query log or an equivalent query-duration metric.

Not covered

Picking which warehouse product to run this on, or how to lay out its tables once you've decided to build one.

Leans on

5 steps

Where to go next

Design your first star schema

once the warehouse is decided, this designs its first schema

Bronze, silver, and gold: lay out a new pipeline's layers

for laying out the new warehouse's own landing and cleanup layers once it exists

Checked 25 Aug 2026

Part of the Data Warehousing cookbook