Real-time interactive analysis focuses on multi-object and multi-perspective analysis tasks. By employing a multiple userdatabase interaction process, interactive analysis is able to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the analytic task. Comparing to traditional database where queries are issued and answered in a single interaction, interactive analysis emphasizes on the responses time of the query and timeliness of the results. Real-time interactive analysis has been extensively studied in recently years. In this survey, comprehensive review is provided on the theoretical foundation, data models, and systems of the real-time interactive analysis.