| OLTP Database | Data Warehouse | Data Lake | |
|---|---|---|---|
Data Structure | Structured | Structured | Unstructured, Semi-structured, Structured |
High-level Use Case | Processing Business Transactions | Data Science/Analysis | Data Science/Analysis |
Users | Business Users/Customers | Data Scientists/Data Analysts/Business Analysts | Data Scientists |
Unique Advantage | Optimized for rapidly dealing with transactions one at a time | Highly performant for executing analytical queries on large number of rows of data | Can store raw, untransformed data at optimal cost |