HTAP is Dead

Over the past few decades, the evolution of database architecture has seen significant shifts, from the unified transactional and analytical systems of the '80s to the specialized OLTP and OLAP systems of the '90s and 2000s, leading to the emergence of Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing (HTAP) in 2014. Despite technical advancements, HTAP struggled to achieve a strong product-market fit, as cloud data warehouses became the dominant force, largely due to their ability to handle both OLTP and OLAP workloads effectively. The modern data ecosystem has moved towards a modular approach, where data teams assemble custom systems using best-in-class components, such as OLTP systems, stream processors, and real-time query layers, to effectively manage fast OLAP queries on fresh transactional data. This approach, which emphasizes composition over consolidation, signifies how the spirit of HTAP lives on in the disaggregated data stacks of today, even as the original concept of HTAP databases fades.