Relational database management systems (RDBMS) have been around for over 50 years. They have been at the heart of enterprises, supporting everything from ledger systems to web-based applications. These systems were designed and optimized for business data processing and are commonly referred to as online transactional processing (OLTP) systems because they support the day to day operations of a company.

OLTP workloads need databases that can handle a high volume of transactions and ensure Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability of data - meaning they are ACID compliant. But in addition to the transactional support needed to run a business, organizations over time realized that they needed deeper insights into their overall business performance.