SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
1) What is SAP HANA?
SAP HANA is a modern platform for real-time analytics and applications. It enables
organization to analyze business operations based on large volume and variety of detailed
data in real-time, as it happens.. In addition to real-time analytics, SAP is also delivering new
class of real-time applications, powered by SAP HANA platform. The platform can be
deployed as an appliance or delivered via the cloud. SAP in-memory computing is the core
technology underlying SAP HANA platform.
2) What is SAP HANA APPLIANCE?
SAP HANA appliance is a flexible, multi-purpose, data-source-agonistic in-memory appliance
that combines SAP software components optimized to run on Intel-based hardware delivered
by SAP’s leading
partners such as Dell, Cisco, IBM, HP, and Fujitsu. It includes a number of integrated SAP
software components including the SAP HANA database, real-time replication services, data
services, data and lifecycle management, support for multiple interfaces based on industry
standards and easy to use data modelling tool called SAP HANA studio.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
3) What kind of applications is being delivered on top of SAP HANA?
SAP is delivering a new class of applications on top of the SAP HANA platform that provides
real-time insights on big data and state-of-the-art analysis such as machine learning, pattern
recognition, and predictive capabilities. These applications can empower companies to
transform the way they run their business, from enabling rapid, sense-and-respond processes
and targeted actions, to even rethinking their business models.
SAP recently announced two new solutions that are built on the SAP HANA platform – SAP
Smart Meter Analytics and SAP ERP Rapid Deployment Solution for Profitability Analysis.
SAP Smart Meter Analytics, powered by SAP HANA, enables utility companies to turn
massive volumes of smart meter data into powerful insights and actions. With this application,
companies can:
• Instantly aggregate time of use blocks and total consumption profiles to analyze their
customers’ energy usage by what neighborhood they are in, the size of their homes or
businesses, building type, and by any other dimension and at any level of granularity
• Segment customers with precision based on energy consumption patterns that are
automatically generated by identifying customers that have similar energy usage behavior
• Provide energy efficiency benchmarking based on statistical analysis so that utility
companies can help their customers understand where they stand compared to their peers
and how they can improve their energy efficiency
• Empower customers with direct access to energy usage insights via web portals and mobile
devices connected to SAP Smart Meter Analytics via application programming interfaces
These capabilities delivered by SAP Smart Meter Analytics enable utility companies to
increase adoption of service options such as demand response programs, launch targeted
energy efficiency programs, improve fraud detection capabilities, and develop new tariffs and
more accurate load forecasts.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
SAP ERP Rapid Deployment Solution for Profitability Analysis with SAP HANA dramatically
improves the speed and depth of working with large volumes of financial data. This solution
can be implemented alongside the wider
SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Performance Management solutions portfolio to help
organizations create a complete picture of their cost and profit drivers. The solution delivers
the following capabilities to corporate finance departments:
• Perform real-time profitability reporting on large scale data volumes
• Conduct instant, on-the-fly analysis of profitability data at any level of granularity,
aggregation, and dimension
• Run cost allocations at significantly faster processing time
• Empower business users with easy, self-service access to trusted profitability information
Deployed either by SAP Consulting as a rapid-deployment solution, or by an experienced
SAP partner, SAP ERP Rapid Deployment Solution for Profitability Analysis helps companies
engage in faster and more efficient profitability cycles and month-end closing processes.
These solutions join the SAP® Business Objects™ Strategic Workforce Planning application,
delivered earlier this year, as part of the family of applications enabled by the SAP HANA
platform. SAP is continuing to identify and design new applications for key business
processes across lines of business and industries that can benefit significantly from the power
of in-memory computing.
For more details on the applications being delivered on SAP HANA please reach out to your
SAP account executive.
4) What is IN-MEMORY COMPUTING?
SAP in-memory computing is a breakthrough technology that enables analysis of very large,
non-aggregated data at unprecedented speed in local memory (vs. disk-based database).
The primary capabilities of this technology are to store information in primarily columnar
format (note - it also has the row store for certain data types) that can compress and store
massive amounts of information in main memory, utilize parallel processing on multiple cores
on the Intel architecture and move data intensive calculations from the applications layer into
the database layer for even faster processing. Since all the detailed data is available in main
memory and processed on the fly, there is no need for aggregated information and
materialized views, fundamentally simplifying the architecture and hence reducing latency,
complexity and cost.
In business terms, this means that complex analyses, plans and simulations can be done
based on real-time data and made available immediately. Previously, people had to decide
between speed versus a more granular picture of their business. Now customers can look at
information in any level of detail and in real-time.
This technology serves as the foundation for the SAP HANA appliance, the SAP HANA
platform and, in turn, applications powered by SAP HANA.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
5) What is the relational and history leading up to SAP HANA?
SAP was an early pioneer in the concept of using in-memory technology for improving
performance and columnar databases to gain high data compression rates. TREX and SAP
Enterprise Search were the first solutions to use these concepts. Building on the strength of
these early products, SAP then released the very successful SAP Net Weaver® Business
Warehouse Accelerator (SAP Net Weaver BW Accelerator).
With SAP Net Weaver BW Accelerator firmly established in the market, SAP expanded its
vision to other purposeful ways to leverage this in-memory technology to further benefit its
customers. SAP’ s focus on Business Intelligence (BI) led to the decision to combine the BI
functionality from SAP Business Objects with the in-memory analytical engine of SAP Net
Weaver BW Accelerator, creating an accelerated BI solution called SAP Business Objects
Explorer, accelerated version for SAP BW.
With a focus on openness and heterogeneity, SAP then evolved SAP Business Objects
Explorer by including data integration. This allowed the solution to access and accelerates
any data, and all information beyond structured data in SAP Net Weaver BW. This latest
wave of SAP Business Objects Explorer, accelerated version, was released to market to in
Q2 2010. Building upon the success of this accelerated BI solution, SAP has delivered SAP
HANA for real-time analytics and a new class of applications, such as SAP Business Object
Strategic Workforce Planning and SAP Smart Meter Analytics (available in H2 of 2011),
powered by SAP HANA.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
6) How are customers using SAP HANA Today?
The first use cases focused on providing “real real-time” analytical capabilities for SAP
Business Suite applications such as cost based profitability reporting next to SAP ERP or
sales and customer analytics and segmentation next to SAP CRM. It replicates transactional
data via a real-time replication service, or extracts it via data services and exposes it to SAP
Business Objects BI (or Microsoft Excel) for real-time analysis and data exploration.
In addition, customers are increasingly utilizing SAP HANA for high value and purpose-built
analytical use cases outside the traditional SAP Business Suite environments with consumer,
interactive, web and machine data for instance.
Finally, SAP is delivering a new class of applications on top of the SAP HANA platform that
provides real-time insights on big data and state-of-the-art analysis such as machine learning,
pattern recognition, and predictive capabilities.
7) Is SAP HANA Available Today?
Yes, SAP HANA is generally available since June 20th, 2011.
8) I am an ERP and NON SAP DW customer. How can i Leverage SAP HANA?
For customers who do not want to disrupt their existing landscape, SAP HANA can be
deployed as a high-performance data foundation that resides side-by-side with their ERP or
non-SAP DW. Large volumes of transactional data from the ERP system can be directly
replicated into SAP HANA via the real-time replication services within SAP HANA. In addition,
data from other data sources can be loaded into SAP HANA via the SAP HANA data services
component. Customers can use the SAP HANA modeling environment to create the required
calculation models/objects and expose them to BI tools such as SAP Business Objects
Analysis, Xcelsius®, SAP Business Objects Explorer™ and Microsoft Excel, for reporting and
analysis in real-time (see figure 2).
Alternatively customers can deploy SAP HANA as a high-performance data foundation to
provide real-time reporting and analytics on the large volumes of transactions in their ERP
systems. Selected data from the backend applications (e.g., an ERP system) can be
replicated in real-time into SAP HANA via the real-time replication services. Customers can
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
leverage the SAP HANA modeling environment to extend pre-delivered data models, or build
new data models to suit their needs. Once these data models are built and populated, they
can be exposed to the SAP Business Objects BI tools. This setup will allow customers to
bypass the traditional data warehouse and directly leverage HANA for all reporting purposes.
Since the ERP data is replicated to SAP HANA in real-time, all the standard ERP reporting
can now be done at high speed, and in real-time, by leveraging the capabilities of SAP HANA
(see figure 3).
9) What are the benefits of SAP HANA Today?
Information is an asset companies can use to make better decisions. The ability to capitalize
on this asset remains one of the highest priorities for organizations of all descriptions.
However, delivering on that need – for everyone in the organization – remains elusive. Inmemory computing is a disruptive force that provides the speed and agility to power analytics
at unprecedented performance levels, while remaining cost-effective. In summary, the SAP
HANA delivers:
• Breakthrough analytics - Deliver real-time insight and manage ‘big data’ with the SAP
HANA appliance. The business imperative for rapid change is driving new demands for
business and technology. The need to get all the right information to business users without
the delay of typical enterprise data warehouses is critical to using data as a competitive
differentiator. Traditional disk-based data warehouses have limits in terms their ability to
benefit from major technology trends such as multi-core CPUs, in-memory processing, and
columnar storage. The move to SAP in-memory computing technology is a move to a futureproof foundation that can truly fulfill the promise of real-time business.
• Amazing new applications - Drive rapid innovation and meet strategic challenges with a
new wave of real-time applications. In every vertical solution and functional area of business
there are common themes of information needs. At the same time, every organization is
unique in the way it can use data to drive their business in new ways. Customers need the
ability to use powerful technology to easily leverage all their data, so they can flexibly model
their business in a rapidly changing, competitive environment.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
• Dramatic simplification - Reduce complexity to lower cost and accelerate value delivery
from IT. New hardware technologies and advances in software have dramatically improved
performance, with similar reduction in costs, making new computing paradigms possible.
Business requirements demand that business analysts have the flexibility to define their view
of the information and the application. Efficient IT organizations strive for low redundancy and
high re-use of system, information, and human resources.
10) What is the release strategy for subsequent versions of SAP HANA?
The product release strategy for SAP HANA has been greatly streamlined to ensure a nondisruptive approach to adoption and upgrades of the solution. Going forward, subsequent
versions of SAP HANA will be released via service packs as opposed to new versions. That
means that customers who adopt SAP HANA today can more easily incorporate additional
capabilities found in subsequent releases without disruption to both IT and business users.
For example, the latest service pack for SAP HANA (SPS 2) offers enhanced security
auditing, trigger based data replication and a much more robust distributed system landscape.
For customers adopting SAP HANA, this means that they now have a stable foundation for a
new generation of applications that will be predicated on this in-memory platform. From an IT
management perspective, this eliminates the complexity and unnecessary delays in upgrades
and adoption. There is only one SAP HANA release, and everything moves forwards from
there, in the true spirit of timeless software.
11) What I am ASAP BW Customer. What are the advantages for running SAP BW on
HANA?
SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3x running on HANA as the underlying In-Memory DB Platform
merging DB & BWA in one single persistency. Here are the advantages.
•
o
o
o
o
Dramatic Simplification:
SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3x running on HANA as the underlying In-Memory DB
Platform merging DB & BWA in one single persistency for lower TCO.
To accelerate 5TB of BW data, you would need 21 blades in BWA (approx
market cost of HW is $1.5 M + 3rd party database) vs. 1 HANA server (approx market cost of
HW is $200K + no 3rd party database)
Simplified administration via one set of admin tools e.g. for Data Recovery
and High Availability
No special efforts to guarantee fast reporting on any DB object(s)
o
Primary persistence layer under BW, eliminates need separate DB, Pure DB
Conversion without re-implementation - no disruption of existing deployments
•
o
Breakthrough Analytics
Column based storage with highly compression rate and significantly less
data to be materialized
Simplified Layered Scalable architecture (LSA) for your EDW for high
performance querying AND loading.
Reduced materialized layers ---- Info Cube as an aggregation layer
on top of EDW layers obsolete
Greater Ability to report directly off granular Data Store Object (DSO)
layers.
o


more logical layers and less physical layers.◊Reduction in data

redundancy in the LSA
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
Improved load performance for DSOs via built in in-memory DSO activation
o
process
o
o
New EDW optimized In Memory InfoCube and DSO objects that are
redesigned to remove legacy RBDMS workarounds
Excellent query performance as proven with SAP NetWeaver BWA
o
Ability to natively combine BW EDW data with real-time sourced data in
HANA data marts (in local or remote HANA system).
•
o
Amazing Apps: Foundation for building integrated planning applications
In-memory planning engine
Additional calculations done in-memory
o
o
o
Models for SAP business content enabling new applications in retail,
consumer products etc..
BW add-on applications like SEM are available to take advantage of the in
memory features of BW. (note: APO is not supported as yet, we have future plans..
12) Can a NON-SAP Applications customers use SAP HANA?
Absolutely! The beauty of SAP HANA is that it caters to both the SAP applications & NonSAP applications world. Even during the ramp-up and pilot phases we had a number of very
happy Non-SAP applications customers who used SAP Business Objects Data services to
load data from Non-SAP systems into SAP HANA and used SAP Business Objects BI tools to
gain better insight into their data at very high speeds.
A classic example of this would be Utility companies loading smart metering data in near-real
time into SAP HANA and running complex calculations to determine whether they should buy
or sell power from/to the grid. This has a huge impact on their profitability and could be solved
easily with SAP HANA.
13) Are there any limitations around loading data from certain data sources into SAP
HANA?
No! SAP HANA leverages a leading ETL/ELT tool called SAP Business Objects Data services
to load data from SAP or non-SAP data sources in near-real time. SAP business suite
customers, who need real-time replication, can use SLT (System Landscape Transformation),
the new real-time replication tool packaged in SAP HANA. This real-time replication tool is
database agnostic, OS agnostic and also supports Unicode & Non-Unicode systems all the
way back to R/3 4.6c. The tool also supports replicating data from clustered & pool tables and
also allows you to carry out transformations before loading the data into SAP HANA.
14) What frontend tools can i used with SAP HANA?
SAP HANA comes with built in SQL and MDX interfaces to allow third party data access to
SAP HANA meaning you can technically run any third party application on top of SAP HANA.
However, only SAP Business Objects BI has been optimized to run on SAP HANA to provide
a full suite of business intelligence capabilities for any BI use case scenario. All other front
end third party applications or BI clients will need to go through an official certification
program to get certified & supported on top of SAP HANA.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
15) What How big does HANA scale?
The SAP HANA software is built with a Massive Parallel Processing architecture in-mind and
scales across multiple servers. There is no theoretical limit to the SW’s scaling and this is
limited by the HW appliance configurations that are certified by SAP’s Hardware partners.
16) What How is SAP HANA Priced?
SAP HANA is priced using 2 pricing variables: the volume of data loaded and ‘stored’ in SAP
HANA and the number of users who interact with SAP HANA. In addition, SAP HANA is
available in 3 ‘Editions’ to provide options and choice to customers based on their specific
needs and preferences.
For more details on pricing, please consult you SAP Sales Representative.
17) What is the difference between sap Business Warehouse Accelerator (SAP BWA) &
HANA?
SAP BW Accelerator (SAP BWA) is an in-memory accelerator for BW. HANA is a full featured
in-memory platform. BWA was specifically designed accelerate BW queries by reducing the
data acquisition time
by persisting copies of the Info Cube data in-memory. SAP BWA is focused on improving the
query performance of SAP Net Weaver BW. SAP BWA can be used today with any SAP BW
7.0 release and above.
SAP HANA is an in-memory appliance and platform for delivering high-performance analytics
and applications. As such, it includes a full-featured in-memory database. Data can be loaded
into SAP HANA from SAP & non-SAP data sources and viewed using SAP BusinessObjects
front end tools. In the near future, SAP HANA will also act as an In-memory database that will
power SAP Net Weaver BW 7.3 and above. In this way it will be able to dramatically improve
the overall performance of SAP Net Weaver BW by combining the value proposition of both
the database & BWA into a single platform.
18) WhatCan i upgrade my existing SAP BWA licences to SAP HANA?
SAP currently markets and licenses SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator and SAP HANA as
separate products. If and when SAP adopts a generally available standard migration policy for
SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, SAP will extend such migration policy to SAP HANA to
qualified SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator customers.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
1.1 What are the product names?
HANA is an overarching product name that forms several components. When we talk about the inmemory database (previously IMDB or NewDB), we now call it SAP HANA Database. When the
database is installed onto an appliance, we call the appliance a SAP HANA Appliance. The toolset used
to administer and model SAP HANA is called SAP HANA Studio. Applications built on HANA will be
marked "powered by SAP HANA".
This means that the new version of SAP's data warehouse product based on SAP HANA Database 1.0
SP03, is called NetWeaver BW 7.3, powered by SAP HANA.
1.2 What is SAP HANA Appliance 1.0 SP02?
SAP HANA 1.0 is an analytics appliance that consists of certified hardware, an In Memory DataBase
(IMDB) an Analytics Engine and some tooling for getting data in and out of HANA. You build the logic
and structures yourself, and use a tool e.g. SAP BusinessObjects, to visualise or analyse data.
1.3 What are the limitations of SAP HANA 1.0 SP02?
HANA 1.0 as an appliance is effectively a database and analytics appliance. You can load data in one of
three different ways, from just about any location - in real time, or in batch, from SAP and non-SAP
data-sources. Currently on SAP BusinessObjects BI4, Explorer and Analysis for Excel are supported as
reporting tools, but other tools are expected to be supported in the future. As much as anything, SAP
are limiting support for integrated scenarios so they can get the stable product stable.
As an aside, we are already working on projects that include HANA 1.0 SP02 integrated with SAP Event
Insight and the Sybase Unwired Platform. HANA is well on its way to becoming a general purpose
database and there are ODBC drivers that should be supported generically, in time.
1.4 What is SAP HANA 1.5, 1.2 or 1.0 SP03?
On 11th November 2011, SAP HANA 1.0 SP03 was released into Ramp-Up, along with the application
layer for SAP's Data Warehouse product, called NetWeaver BW 7.3, powered by SAP HANA. This will
allow any SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 Data Warehouse to be migrated into a HANA appliance. HANA 1.0
SP03 specifically also accelerates BW calculations and planning, which means you get even more
performance gains.
Bluefin Solutions' initial tests with this product suggest that it will be revolutionary to the 14,000 SAP
NetWeaver BW customers, removing issues with information availability and performance. SAP
NetWeaver BW 7.3, powered by HANA, is expected to be available to the general market in Q2 2012.
1.5 What's the difference between SAP HANA and IMDB?
HANA is the name for the current BI appliance (HANA 1.0) and the BW Data Warehouse appliance
(HANA 1.0 SP03). Both of these use the SAP IMDB Database Technology (SAP HANA Database) as
their underlying RDBMS. Expect SAP to start to differentiate this more clearly as they start to position
the technology for use cases other than Analytics.
1.6 If I can run NetWeaver BW on IMDB/HANA, why can't I run the Business
Suite/ERP 6.0?
Simply because it's not mature enough yet to support business critical applications. From a technology
perspective, it is already possible to run the Business Suite on IMDB and SAP has trialled moving some
large databases into HANA already.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
Expect the first non-analytics product running on the SAP HANA database platform to be the smallbusiness oriented SAP Business One - a version of SAP's ERP platform designed for businesses with
1-100 employees.
1.7 What is SAP HANA great at?
The best thing that HANA brings to the table is the ability to aggregate large data volumes in near realtime - and to have the data updated in near real-time. SAP's demos show hundreds of billions of records
of data being aggregated in a matter of seconds. SAP has built a set of Analytics Apps on top of HANA
and this are set to be great point use cases to get customers up and running quickly.
The really great SAP HANA apps that have been created mix three big performance improvements.
First, the performance of in-memory analytics, second, an inefficient design and third, a change in
process that allows further improvements. This is what SAP's CTO Vishal Sikka affectionally call the
"100,000x club".
In addition, SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3, powered by SAP HANA looks like it will be a no-brainer for the
majority of SAP's 14,000 BW customers. The improvements in performance and flexibility it allows
resolve many of the classic data warehouse problems that have plagued the market for 20 years.
1.8 What is SAP HANA bad at?
SAP HANA improves the biggest bottleneck that exists in standard database platforms - the spinning
disks. In-memory technology is typically 100-1000x faster than disk for this reason. However in-memory
technology does not always calculate any faster than existing technologies, especially since some
analytics engines out there have a lead on maturity.
So, there are scenarios where I/O was not the bottleneck and calculations were, that SAP HANA may
not provide benefits. This is especially the case when sending out large datasets to front end tools like
SAP BusinessObjects BI4 which then have further calculations to perform.
SAP is doing great things in this in the next version of SAP HANA and BusinessObjects BI, where the
calculation layer of BusinessObjects will actually reside in HANA.
1.9 What does SAP HANA cost?
SAP HANA is priced by the 64GB unit right now, and there is some discounting based on volume. As
usual with SAP licenses, it's best to contact your account exec directly and talk to them. The minimum
purchase amount is currently 64GB, and the smallest appliance is 128GB, which is upgradeable to
256GB. This means if you buy 64GB today, you can easily incrementally expand up to 256GB.
1.10 Why is SAP HANA so fast?
Regular RDBMS technologies put the information on spinning plates of iron (hard disks) from which the
information is retrieved. HANA stores information in electronic memory, which is some 50x faster
(depending on how you calculate). HANA stores a copy on magnetic disk, in case of power failure or the
like. In addition, most SAP systems have the database on one system and a calculation engine on
another, and they pass information between them. With HANA, this all happens within the same
machine.
1.11 Does HANA/IMDB replace Oracle?
It's the elephant in the room, but once the Business Suite runs on IMDB, Oracle won't be needed any
more by SAP customers who purchase HANA. This doesn't affect anything in the short term because
many of those people buying HANA today will still need an Oracle ERP system.
However if you run an Oracle or DB2 data mart that performs poorly, you could replace this outright with
SAP HANA and that would allow you to actually eliminate some licenses today.
1.12 What is this about 10:1 compression with SAP HANA compared to Oracle?
A typical uncompressed Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database, when put into HANA, will be 10x
smaller than before and this is due to the way that HANA stores information in a compressed format.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
Note that most databases are now compressed and these numbers may not fit your scenario, and to
add to this you need 2x the RAM as your database, plus room for growth. HANA sizing is still a dark art.
Our initial sizing suggests that for NetWeaver BW, the key database tables will compress between 5x
and 10x.
1.13 You mean I have to buy an SAP HANA only 2.5x smaller than my big Oracle
RDBMS? What about archiving and data ageing?
Yes, in some instances you may have to buy a HANA appliance that is only 2.5x smaller than it would
be under Oracle. And data ageing isn't part of the 1.0 release, but SAP is certainly working on it pretty
hard. Let's hope they release something faster than you need to buy a bigger HANA appliance!
1.14 What's the wider market opportunity for IMDB?
This is the interesting thing - no one knows yet, and few analysts seem to have cottoned on that the
wider market opportunity might be huge. Think not just SAP applications but any third party that requires
ultra-high speed. Think not just an appliance but a development platform. Time will tell.
2. SAP HANA database hardware
2.1 What hardware is supported right now?
Talk to your hardware vendor - all of the major vendors e.g. HP, IBM, Dell, Cisco, Fujitsu and Hitachi
have certified HANA offerings now. Technically HANA will run on any Intel x64 based system from your
laptop through to the big 40-core, 2TB RAM servers. It is however only supported on a small number of
big rack-mount servers like the Dell R910 and HP DL980.
There is now a supported hardware list on SAP's website - http://service.sap.com/pam (login required).
Appliances vary from 128GB to the IBM scale-out appliance which is 16x512GB nodes (8TB).
2.2 Why doesn't SAP HANA run on blades?
The first HANA blades have now been certified by Hitachi as of November 2011 and are the first built
with network storage. Other vendors haven't got blade chassis that can power the huge computing
required of SAP HANA with the top-end Intel E7 CPUs and 1TB RAM.
http://www.hds.com/assets/pdf/hitachi-solution-profile-converged-platform-for-sap-hana.pdf
Expect the other vendors to follow suit when they can!
2.3 Does SAP make its own IMDB/HANA hardware?
Yes, but only in the labs so far. There are no public plans to compete against IBM/HP/Dell in this space,
but it may make sense for SAP to enter the appliance market, especially in the context of Data Centres
and even more so in the context of the SAP Business byDesign cloud offering, which will run on HANA.
2.4 How big does SAP HANA scale?
Theoretically at least - very well. The biggest single-server HANA hardware will run most mid-size
workloads - 2TB of in-memory storage is equivalent to 5-20TB of Oracle storage. The way that HANA
works means that it is possible to chain multiple systems together - meaning that scalability has thus-far
been determined by the size of customers' wallets. Do note that whilst SAP talk up "Big Data" quite a lot,
HANA currently only scales to the small-end of Big Data, which refers to the kind of huge datasets that
FaceBook or Google have to store - not Terabytes, but rather Petabytes.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
2.5 What storage subsystem does SAP HANA use?
This varies from vendor to vendor but most use direct attached storage (DAS). Both regular magnetic
disks and SSD storage can be used for the backup of the database (HANA runs in memory remember,
so disk storage is just for backup, and later, for data ageing) but so far, all the certified hardware
configurations use magnetic disks. Note that you require 2x storage that you have RAM, which is 2x the
database size - i.e. storage size = 4x database size. In most cases there is additional ultra-high speed
SSD storage for log files.
The Hitachi solution is the first SAP HANA certified solution that uses network attached storage (NAS),
which is expected in time to be the dominant storage type for HANA. However IBM at least are
eschewing network storage in favour of local storage, plus replication using their proprietary GPFS
technology. IBM claim that - for now at least - this is the most reliable and cost-effective mechanism for
SAP HANA.
3. Technical FAQ
3.1 What source databases does HANA support in real-time?
There are two mechanisms that HANA supports for near-real-time data loads. First is the Sybase
Replication Server (SRS), which works with SAP or non-SAP source systems running on Microsoft, IBM
or Oracle databases. This was expected to be the most common mechanism for SAP data sources but
there remain some license challenges around replicating data out of Microsoft and Oracle databases,
depending on how you license the database layer of SAP. If you buy your database license direct from
the vendor then you are fine, but if you buy it through SAP then you may have a restricted license that
does not allow for usage of SRS.
For those scenarios, SAP have a second choice of replication mechanism called System Landscape
Transformation (SLT). SLT is also near-real-time and works from a trigger from the SAP Business Suite
products. This is both database-independent and pretty neat, because it allows for application-layer
transformations and therefore greater flexibility than the SRS model. Note that SLT only works with SAP
source systems.
3.2 What source databases does HANA support for batch loads?
If you use SAP BusinessObjects Data Services 4.0 for bulk loads then pretty much anything. BO-DS is a
very flexible Extract, Transform & Load tool that supports many databases. Data Services was
previously called Data Integrator, and was previously called Acta, prior to being acquired by Business
Objects.
You can reasonably load into HANA using Data Services every 10 minutes and Data Services allows for
excellent flexibility because you can take care of complex business transformations including e.g.
address verification outside of HANA, which may allow simplified modelling within HANA.
3.3 What additional limitations does Sybase Replication Server present?
SRS has additional restrictions which are worth bearing on mind. It can only replicate Unicode data and
does not support IBM DB2 compressed tables at this time.
4. Follow-ons, corrections & credits
This is a work in progress and your help correcting me, clarifying some things I may have not explained
so well or even just asking a question that I haven't covered would be really useful for the wider market.
Let me know and I'll expand this as the months go on!
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
SAP EDUCATION
SAMPLE QUESTIONS: C_HANAIMP_10
SAP Certified Application Associate – SAP HANA 1.0 – print view
Disclaimer: These sample questions are for self-evaluation purposes only and do not appear on the actual
certification exams. Answering the sample questions correctly is no guarantee that you will pass the
certification exam. The certification exam covers a much broader spectrum of topics, so do make sure you
have familiarized yourself with all topics listed in the exam competency areas before taking the certification
exam.
Questions
1. What are the benefits of implementing SAP HANA with SAP ERP?
Note: There are three (3) correct answers to this question.
a)
O
b)
O
Performance optimization for operational reporting
Processing of large volumes of data
c)
O
Reduction of Business Suite process steps
d)
O
Provision of BI Content
e)
O
Provision of real-time analytics
2. Which of the following would be reasons for building a calculation view with SQL script rather than the
graphical interface?
Note: There are two (2) correct answers to this question.
a)
O
To reuse standard SQL functions not provided within the modeler
b)
O
To create custom reusable calculation functions
c)
O
To query existing attribute and analytic views
d)
O
To perform projections on tables
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
e)
O
To perform joins between column and row store tables
3. Which tool can you use to preview calculation view data?
Note: There are two (2) correct answers to this question?
a)
O
SQL Preview
b)
O
Export Model
c)
O
Data Editor
d)
O
Data Preview
e)
O
SQL Editor
4. You have created a balances report with data from SAP HANA and want to check that the values on the
report are correct.
With which of the following would you compare the balances on the report?
Please choose the correct answer.
a)
O
With the balances stored in the SAP BusinessObjects universe
b)
O
With the calculated measures stored in SAP HANA
c)
O
With the aggregate values stored in SAP HANA
d)
O
With the sums of the individual values stored in SAP HANA or in the source
system
5. Which technology supports true real-time replication of SAP ERP Pool and Cluster tables in an SAP HANA
database?
Please choose the correct answer.
a)
O
Sybase Replication Server
b)
O
SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT)
c)
O
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
d)
O
SAP BusinessObjects Information Steward
6. Which of the following settings are mandatory for configuring the import server in the SAP HANA studio?
Please choose the correct answer.
a)
O
Repository name
Logon credentials
b)
O
Type of objects
SAP HANA target object
c)
O
Server address
Repository name
d)
O
Type of objects
Source connection
7. Which component of the Execution Control module breaks the query into executable parts?
Please choose the correct answer.
a)
O
SQL script
b)
O
Calculation engine
c)
O
MDX
d)
O
SQL parser
8. Which of the following tasks are mandatory if you want to use SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with SAP
HANA for reporting?
Note: There are three (3) correct answers to this question.
a)
O
Create a BICS connection to SAP HANA.
b)
O
Create an Explorer information space.
c)
O
Schedule the indexing of the Explorer information space.
d)
O
Index the Explorer information space.
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
e)
O
Configure the Explorer in the Central Management Console.
9. You want to grant authorization to a specific user to read data held in a view.
Which tasks do you perform in the User Editor of the SAP HANA studio to achieve this?
Note: There are three (3) correct answers to this question.
a)
O
Assign the Update privilege to the appropriate analytic view.
b)
O
Select the appropriate attribute view for the package privilege.
c)
O
Select the appropriate analytic view for the SQL and analytic privileges.
d)
O
Assign the Select privilege to the appropriate analytic view.
e)
O
Select the user from the user folder in the SAP HANA instance catalog.
Solutions
1 a) Correct
2 a) Correct
3 a) Incorrect
4 a) Incorrect
5 a) Incorrect
1 b) Correct
2 b) Correct
3 b) Incorrect
4 b) Incorrect
5 b) Correct
1 c) Incorrect
2 c) Incorrect
3 c) Incorrect
4 c) Incorrect
5 c) Incorrect
1 d) Incorrect
2 d) Incorrect
3 d) Correct
4 d) Correct
5 d) Incorrect
1 e) Correct
2 e) Incorrect
3 e) Correct
6 a) Incorrect
7 a) Incorrect
8 a) Incorrect
9 a) Incorrect
6 b) Incorrect
7 b) Incorrect
8 b) Correct
9 b) Incorrect
6 c) Correct
7 c) Incorrect
8 c) Incorrect
9 c) Correct
6 d) Incorrect
7 d) Correct
8 d) Correct
9 d) Correct
8 e) Correct
9 e) Correct
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.
SAP HANA BASIC INFORMATION & CERTIFICATION Q&A
Prepared By Chandra Ganagavarapu
Infoviewsolutions Ltd.