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This is a class of program that facilitates and manages transaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval in a number of industries, including banking, airlines, mailorder, supermarkets, and manufacturing. Probably the longest- and most widely-installed OLTP product is IBM's CICS (Customer Information Control System, pronounced "kicks").

Today's online transaction processing increasingly requires support for transactions that span a network--or even more than one company. For this reason, new OLTP software uses client/server processing and brokering software that allows transactions to run on different computer platforms in a network.

As of 2004, Service Oriented Architecture and Web services are the area where most new OLTP development is taking place.