HTAP databases aim to accommodate both transactional and analytical tasks within a single system, but this leads to a complex environment where the database must juggle the demands of high-speed transaction processing and resource-intensive analytical queries, often resulting in performance compromises. HTAP systems can be broadly classified into three categories: shared-everything architectures, shared-nothing architectures, and hybrid architectures. These systems face challenges such as mixed workload complexity, performance trade-offs, data model mismatch, scalability challenges, resource contention, maintenance and administration complexity, limitation in analytical processing, and evolution of data processing architectures. PlanetScale is an optimized managed MySQL database platform built on top of Vitess, designed for OLTP workloads, which may be a better approach for complex applications with distinct transactional and analytical workloads that can be separated, allowing each database to be optimized for its specific workload.