So, when my aggregate queries/views are too slow even after indexing and tuning, then I should start to google what OLAP is? My go-to tool for this has been materialized views (or in some cases simply a new table that is refreshed every now and then). What would be the cases when OLAP is better/worse than materialized view? (based on the main article, it sounds like pretty much no other advantage for OLAP than smaller resource requirements)
If your needs are well-defined in advance, you are fine with a materialized view. What I mean by "needs" is, "What questions are you trying to answer?"
OLAP's strength is that the platforms that implement it can precompute aggregations across all of your data and let you quickly answer questions that you might not have known you had.
