SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytical Appliance) is an in-memory, column store database that supports real-time data loads and analytics. As the name conveys, SAP HANA is an appliance combining hardware and software. SAP has been providing business applications for different domains for many years. Now, it has come up with a game-changing database platform that helps a business to run faster and analyze decision-making in real time, thus helping users to analyze data within seconds.
In SAP HANA, both analytical and transactional data is stored. Along with this, analysis of the data combination is possible on-the-fly. SAP HANA unleashes the potential to analyze Big Data in real time, which includes structured and unstructured data. SAP HANA also supports data warehousing in which existing SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP BW) models to SAP HANA and makes decisions on top of this. SAP HANA also possesses libraries that support predictive, spatial, and textual analysis, which can be run on multiple data sources.
Chapter 1, SAP HANA Studio – Look and Feel, gives an introduction to SAP HANA Studio, the GUI which will be used throughout the book for almost all the recipes.
Chapter 2, Data Provisioning, provides recipes on how to load data into SAP HANA using different tools. The source system for the data can be either SAP or non-SAP systems. Moreover, as SAP HANA supports real-time analysis, a selection of tools and the types of data load will also be covered. Recipes in this chapter help in deciding on and implementing the solutions.
Chapter 3, Modeling, shows how to create models in SAP HANA. The models created will be exposed for reporting. Once we have data in physical tables, we create models in SAP HANA that help us to analyze data on-the-fly.
Chapter 4, Reporting, shows how to create reports on top of SAP HANA models and consume data for analysis. Different people in the organization use the same data in different ways for their analysis. Recipes in this chapter will help us learn how to do analysis using different reporting tools on top of SAP HANA.
Chapter 5, Advanced Features in SAP HANA, helps you learn how to work with advanced features such as hierarchies and currency conversion in SAP HANA. The recipes in this chapter may not be useful in all situations, but they help in complex scenarios.
Chapter 6, User Management, introduces the basics of administration in SAP HANA, which covers user role creation, assigning them, and how they work.
Appendix A, Introduction to SAP HANA, gives a basic idea of what SAP HANA is by describing the features and comparing it with traditional databases available on the market.
Appendix B, Architecture, explains the core architecture in detail with all the components of SAP HANA.
Appendix C, Applications Powered by SAP HANA, shows how SAP HANA can be used as a database in supporting other applications.
There are different SAP HANA editions offered by SAP. We need to have any one edition installed:
|
Software component |
Enterprise edition extended |
Enterprise edition |
Platform edition |
|---|---|---|---|
|
HANA Studio |
X |
X |
X |
|
HANA Information Composer |
X |
X |
X |
|
HANA Client |
X |
X |
X |
|
HANA Client for Excel |
X |
X |
X |
|
HANA User Interface for information access |
X |
X |
X |
|
HANA Database |
X |
X |
X |
|
HANA Host Agent |
X |
X |
X |
|
Diagnostics Agent |
X |
X |
X |
|
BusinessObjects Data Services |
X |
X | |
|
HANA Direct Extractor Connection (DXC) |
X |
X | |
|
Landscape Transformation Add-on (SLT) |
X |
X | |
|
Landscape Transformation Replication Server |
X |
X | |
|
HANA Load Controller (LC) |
X | ||
|
Sybase Replication Server and Agent |
X | ||
|
Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) |
X |
If you are a beginner and you consider yourself as a future SAP HANA modeler, then this is the perfect book for you. You should have basic knowledge of RDBMS concepts and SQL to start preparing the recipes that are covered in this book.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles, are shown as follows: "These jobs will be recreated automatically from IUUC_MONITOR_<mass_transfer_id>."
A block of code is set as follows:
Var_out = SELECT "SalesOrderId","ProductId","QuantityUnit","Currency","Quantity","GrossAmount","NetAmount" from "_SYS_BIC"."SAP_HANA_COOKBOOK/AN_SAP_HANA_COOKBOOK";
Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Enter the values for SAP HANA Hostname and Instance Number, and then click on Next."
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