Market position
Big data
Big data refers to data sets that exceed the capabilities
of commonly used tools. Although no formal definition is based on the size,
these datasets generally reach terabytes (TB), petabytes (PB), or exabytes. SAP
HANA is positioned as a solution to the major challenges of data at the bottom
of this scale. When launched HANA started with 1TB of RAM supports up to 5 TB
of uncompressed data. Late 2011 hardware with 8 TB of RAM which became
available supported up to 40 TB of uncompressed data. SAP Sybase IQ owned by
its more mature MapReduce-like functionality has been cited as potentially
better fit for large data sets. In May 2012 HANA was able to run on servers
with main memory 100 TB powered by IBM. Hasso Plattner said the system was
large enough to carry eight largest SAP customers.
Applications
Strategic workforce planning
SAP Business Objects Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP)
was among the first SAP application to be redesigned to take advantage of the
capabilities of Hana. SWP HANA is for HR executives who want to simulate models
of labor taking into account real-time turnover, retirement, employment and
other variables.
Analytics smart meters
In September 2011, SAP released its analysis tool smart
meters. This is to help utilities with large deployments of smart meters to
manage and utilize the large amount of data generated by these counters.
SAP HANA Cloud
options
In September 2011, SAP announced its intention to work in
partnership with EMC and VM ware to enable a cloud application infrastructure
based on HANA. This platform as a service offering (PaaS) includes HANA
DB-as-a-service in collaboration with the choice between a Java or ABAP stack
based. Applications created for each cell will have access to HANA DB through a
variety of APIs. The approach based on Java, the code name Project of the
river, is based on the 7.3.1 server Net Weaver Java applications. ABAP-based
approach is designed more for the existing user base of SAP - for example, SAP
Business By Design Business Suite of enterprise applications, including ERP, CRM
and management of the supply chain.
On October 16, 2012 SAP announced the general
availability of two options SAP HANA delivered in the cloud
SAP Net Weaver Cloud (now called SAP HANA Cloud - an
application service based on open standards and
One SAP HANA - the deployment of SAP HANA on the Amazon
Web Services cloud on an hourly basis. 60GB is the only option available and
costs a 24/7 of $ 30,572 / year instance, but an initial engagement with Amazon
can significantly reduce the hardware cost.
Prerequisites
As it is very central, the SAP HANA DB is
"just" a relational database. There are a lot more, but before you
dive into the details, make sure you know your SQL. So make sure you have the
SQL 92 specification available, and if necessary, find a tutorial on SQL Web -
or let me Google for you.
Advanced
programming HANA
I mentioned earlier that HANA is "much more than a
relational database" - look at some of the more
advanced topics:
Did you know that HANA supports full-text search and can
therefore bridge the gap between what is commonly called the data (text only)
"structured" (tables with fields that you usually find in relational
databases) and " unstructured "? Research of Fuzzy Developer's Guide
provides information on how to - well, the title says it all - how fuzzy
searches on text data
One of the most interesting features of Hana is the
integration of statistical functions (the so-called Library Predictive
Analytics - PAL) and business functions (Business Function Library - BFL) in
the core database. Discover Predictive Analysis Manual Library-reference manual
library business functions.
I pointed out this section, as in my humble opinion, this
is the coolest part of SAP HANA. HANA create potential as a basis for
high-speed data - but these libraries are a great example for SAP HANA is a
database.
Except for writing wrappers around PAL / BFL, do not
worry too much about the L-language at this point. It will most likely suffer a
significant simplification rolled before a wider public developers (if
applicable). Future versions call PAL / BFL will probably not even need those
wrapper more, but be integrated more naturally SQL Script.
In case the PAL does not provide the statistical analysis
function you want to perform on the data - you can be sure of Statistics
popular programming language R will. So if you're really in mathematics, see
HANA R-integration. For licensing reasons, we can not group R with HANA, but it
is very easy to install - the HANA documentation is a guide for it, and my
colleague Blag wrote a blog to get started easily.
