SAP HANA on The Lars Breddemann Blog

SAP Factory Calendar in Snowflake

Thu, 04 May 2023 08:52:07 +0000

Analysing the data in SAP systems can be done in many ways. While SAP would like all customers to use the tools from their portfolio, many customers prefer to use other platforms. Snowflake is arguably one of the most popular choices for that. If getting the SAP tables into a different data platform would be all that is needed to start writing SQL queries and getting answers, I suspect a lot more SAP customers would move their analytics stack. Alas, it is not that easy at all. SAP’s database design is peculiar and littered with design choices from decades long past, when saving a few bytes in storage could greatly improve the system’s performance or reduce it’s resource consumption.

Answers Pinboard

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 04:33:45 +0000

Apart from writing blog posts I have written answers to many questions on several Q&A sites like StackOverflow and SAP Community. Some of those answers received good feedback and/or the answer surprised me once I worked it out.

SAP HANA middle of the road for Big Data or just average?

Sun, 14 Aug 2022 12:41:02 +0000

When SAP tries to explain HANA as a technology the buzz words “Big Data” have always been part of the story.
Commonly “Big Data with HANA” then gets specified to mean one or another thing - often to caveat what the platform is supposed to be able to do and which usage scenarios require what sort of special handling.

Write better SQL!

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 07:40:46 +0000

When reading Some opinionated thoughts on SQL databases recently, I felt reminded of an observation that I have made in the past: the way SQL is commonly used and presented is way too low-level.

SUDO grant - a compromise

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 05:38:33 +0000

A long intro #

One of the defining characteristics of “enterprise” software is that these systems are used across many parts of organisations and sometimes across many organisations. As with all shared resources commonly agreeing to who is responsible for what with these resources can help a great deal to avoid confusion and false finger-pointing in case something goes pear-shaped (which eventually will happen).

Have yourself a good 🙂🕰! (😎)

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 07:17:41 +0000

Ok, nothing complex, crazy, or high-concept today. Just a reminder that stuff like the following is possible without any effort with your database of choice (including HANA, of course):

This does not stop if you want to dig into query performance. This is what the EXPLAIN PLAN looks like:

Separate business logic from tables and avoid dynamic SQL

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 06:18:51 +0000

Real programming #

One of the aspects of doing “actual” programming is to automate computations. Making the computer do things not just once, say by running a calculation on the October sales data, but to do it over and over again on any months’ sales data.

Why are your scalar UDFs slow? (mine aren't)

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 07:29:53 +0000

What is this about? #

In his blog post Why are scalar UDFs so slow? Jörg Brandeis wonders why user defined scalar functions (scalar UDFs) are slow compared to plain SQL. This is an important question since UDFs would make for very convenient development objects. SQL could be a lot easier to read and maintain if one could put complex or often reused computations into an UDF and just use this in queries, procedures and BW transformations.

DBeaver log files: beware and free up disk space

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 06:50:02 +0000

Remember my post from earlier in April 2020? (Getting data into HANA - the easy way)

In it, I described how to use DBeaver to load CSV files into HANA quick and hassle-free. For DBeaver activities like importing or exporting data are so-called Database Tasks. For every execution of a task, DBeaver keeps a log file and these log files can be easily accessed via the Database Tasks Eclipse View:

How to engineer your DB code

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 00:25:17 +0000

A journey of 1000 miles… #

We are developers. We make the modern world tick and create tools for information workers. We are computer scientists, IT experts, and coders, and we call ourselves engineers. We even renamed a part of our industry “software engineering” to get one step closer to this aspirational goal of being professionals when doing our jobs.

Getting data into HANA - the easy way

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 04:45:21 +0000

In a recent blog post SAP presented several ways to load data into a HANA instance. The main approach shown was to use a combination of Python, SQLAlchemy, and Pandas (a Python data analysis library) as well as the Python-specific version of the SAP HANA client driver.

What is CPB+-Tree in SAP HANA?

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 02:09:55 +0000

A recent question on StackOverflow brought up a topic that is not well covered in the official HANA documentation: the index structures used in HANA’s row-store.

The term CPB tree shows up in several locations in the HANA documentation (e.g. here) but there is no good explanation of what it means and what the HANA admin, developer, or user should do with it.

SAP Online Track 2020

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 05:10:02 +0000

On the last weekend in May, just a few days ago, the SAP Online Track was held. A volunteer-driven, online developer, and user event around SAP technology.

https://twitter.com/Sygyzmundovych/status/1250811896737005570

A friendly nudge from Vitaliy Rudnicki (SAP) on twitter in April made me check if I could manage to come up with a talk and write and record it in time for the event. Obviously, this worked out, otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading about it now.

Find the ONE ... or the other

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 04:05:27 +0000

In his recent blog post " Code Pushdown"Paul Hardy, a long-time SAP community contributor described his first foray into HANA SQLScript programming.

Paul picked a very ABAP-y problem to solve:
Finding records with fallback to a default value.

Using new features not supported?!

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 04:06:02 +0000

A recent question in the HANA Q&A forum brought up an error message that I recently encountered myself.

Modification of table variable is not supported in current SQLScript configuration

The way to produce this error is to

Matchmaker - quick quick?

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 05:07:37 +0000

In Matchmaker, I developed a solution to a not-so-obvious problem.

The solution worked and delivered the right answer - finding documents where the line items match to a certain degree the line items of a reference document.

Matchmaker

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 05:07:31 +0000

SQL is an easy language to learn. A few commands to learn ( SELECT/FROM/WHERE/GROUP BY) and you are good to go.

One downside of the simple syntax and small vocabulary is that it can lead many SQL users to the assumption that these building blocks are all that can be expressed with SQL.

Be careful with dates and timestamps

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 03:11:11 +0000

A recent question on StackOverflow about how to “format” date values in WHERE-conditions in HANA brought up an aspect of date-handling that is easily overlooked and that can lead to unexpected results.

SAP Inside Track #sitMEL – Full Day Event in Melbourne

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 03:01:33 +0000

On Saturday, 15.02.2020, a rather rain-drenched stormy day in Melbourne, Australia, the SAP Inside Track #sitMEL – Full Day Event was held.

I was honored to get a speaker slot and the chance to talk about “Humane DB design and programming”.

One in a Million

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 03:45:03 +0000

Q&A forums can be a treasure trove of interesting questions that turn out to have counter-intuitive answers.

In “Why does select statement taking too long when primary key is present?” the OP made an interesting observation:

The time is now, isn't it?

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 23:27:00 +0000

One of the funny things one can learn when living with South Africans is their concept of time.
" Now now", " Just now" or " now" do mean very different things and can confuse the rest of the world terribly.
For an in-depth explanation don’t hesitate to contact your local Springbok or check this nice online article: South African Time explained: Just Now versus Now Now.

Machine learnings of hana, odbc, and macos

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 10:02:54 +0000

One of the benefits of answering questions from users is that there usually is a pretty good chance that I will learn something along the way. Today’s case was no different. In fact, I learned quite a bit.

Types of NULL

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 06:00:58 +0000

This is about an error I ran into while fiddling with an SQL query. Since it was not immediately obvious to me what was the cause this makes a good topic for a new post.

[NTM] HANA STUDIO NoClassDefFoundError: javax/xml/soap/SOAPException

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 05:48:46 +0000

Sometimes, when I am looking for the solution to a problem by googling, I find my own blog posts or forum replies. These found-again solutions are one of the nice returns from prolonged activity in forums and usually a reminder of how much my detail memory behaves like a colander sometimes…

Conditionally unique

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 04:37:32 +0000

A common requirement for SQL DB modeling is to have something that could be called conditional unique constraint.
The idea is that certain combinations of column values should only occur once if at all, while other combinations are allowed to occur in any number.

New year, same issues and some tips.

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 04:34:44 +0000

Most folks working with SQL DBs for a while will likely come to see how beginners in this area struggle with “declaritive code” and “tell the DB what you want not how to do it”

SQL refactoring example

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 13:06:34 +0000

About a year ago I answered a question on the SAP Community Q&A site and have it on my posts-to-write list ever since to turn it into a blog post.

I feel that I learn a lot from seeing applied examples of concepts and rules - for example from this great presentation from Kevlin Henney that includes a “talk-through” a refactoring example. So, this is my example for others to review.

IF EXISTS would exist

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 04:54:55 +0000

A recurring question of folks using SAP HANA is how to only run a DROP command for objects that actually exist in the database. One could argue that the effect of executing DROP does not depend on whether the object to be dropped exists, because after running the command it will not be there either way, but there is a bit more to it.

How to know "all these things"

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 22:29:06 +0000

There is one predominant reason why databases and database technology get a spot in the conversation of “the business”: performance.
Understanding system performance and coming up with ideas for improving it typically requires a form of end-to-end understanding with different levels of detailed insight on how a query from a client application is processed by SAP HANA.

A long comment

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 03:05:34 +0000

Last Monday I read DJ Adam’s blog post about GraphQL and how this tool might be useful to be added to the toolbox of SAP UI5 developers.
There is a lively discussion over the blog’s topics going on and most of it was around the GraphQL technology and its potential usage in UI5.
I added a comment to this and Mr Adams used this to hook me in for a blog post.
So here we are.

Finding answers on workdays

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 07:10:08 +0000

Cunningham’s Law is the idea that “the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”.

More often than not I feel that some of the answers provided to questions on the SAP Community platform follow this approach, probably being unaware that there is a name for this strategy.

Trouble with time?

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 08:46:03 +0000

There are a couple of topics that are an ongoing source of confusion even for experienced IT professionals and developers. UNICODE handling is one example (see here for info), floating point calculations is another one (this is a good primer) and then there is everything to do with time.

How to give what you don't have

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 03:28:01 +0000

The development tools and techniques for SAP HANA have been extended and enhanced a couple of times since SAP HANA had first been released in 2011.
For apps developed for SAP HANA XS, the new XSA environment means a considerable change in the way application code accesses the database.

Is SAP HANA SQL/SQLScript Turing complete?

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 01:30:07 +0000

There was an interesting (aka nerdy) question in the SAP Community Q&A the other day:

“Are SQLScript and HANA SQL Turing complete?”

I took a swing at it and the following is my result (a slightly edited version of my original answer).

What's your number?

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 05:05:49 +0000

Have you been using the ISNUMERIC function of MySQL, MS SQL Server or PostgreSQL and wondered what to use in SAP HANA instead? If so, this is the blog post for you.

HANA inverts the Thunderdome law

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 04:35:54 +0000

If you’ve watched “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” then " … You know the law: Two men enter, one man leaves …".

HANA, of course, reverses, sorry, disrupts this law by making two (or more) values get out of functions, even when only one input value was provided.

HANA backtrace 36/2017

Sat, 14 Oct 2017 05:59:33 +0000

What to read? Whom to follow? #

One of the important things to pick up in any community is finding out who are the people that usually have good, funny or interesting content. Many community platforms make it easy to find out who are the “leading contributors”, the “heroes”, “aces” etc. Currently, the platform SAP Community is run on struggles with this, big time. It is actually hard to not miss new blog posts, sometimes even if one has subscribed to a specific author.

HANA gets stripped

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 14:00:57 +0000

This is going to be one of those weird blog posts, that basically convey just a single piece of information, but since the new SAP Community platform doesn’t really care for WIKI/document style knowledge storage, I had to come up with a click-bait title to make it a blog post.

A new feature! YAY!?

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 14:00:31 +0000

A recent discussion in the SAP internal JAM community for HANA made me aware of a feature added to HANA SQL starting with HANA 1 SPS 12 (don’t ask the revision, just check the latest), respectively HANA 2 SPS 02 (we don’t speak about SPS 00 and SPS 01, do we?): “calculated columns”.

What HANA needs now is some...

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:00:51 +0000

… logging!

Yes, you just got click-baited into reading this advertisement for a product enhancement idea that I posted: Standard logging facility for SQLScript

The idea here is simple: when you write application logic in SQLScript then you very likely want to have the option to log what your program does.

HANA 2 and two riddle errors

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 14:00:36 +0000

HANA 2 has been out for a while now - even SP01 of it is available already - so I thought it is about time to get more familiar with it.
Using my trusty " skullbox" (HANA in a pocket… ) I installed HANA 2 and realised that I now also will have to have a HANA Cockpit 2.0 installation, to be fully able to use all of the glorious new features.

Eco-friendly slide recycling with HANA

Sun, 02 Apr 2017 14:00:06 +0000

Hey there!

I recently presented a short session on my experiences with developing and debugging non-classic-SAP HANA solutions at the Leading Insights conference in Melbourne (27./28.3.2017).

And since the slides are prepared in a way that they could be used without my talking as well, I thought, I might just post them. So, there they are on slideshare:

Make query hints great again...

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 14:00:26 +0000

In case you ever got frustrated by how 80’s like the SAP HANA hints infrastructure looks like, go and support my improvement idea on SAP Idea place: https://ideas.sap.com/D40094

Go and upvote! Now! :)

Merging right. Some tests with data loading in HANA from Down Under.

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 13:00:12 +0000

Based on SAP HANA SPS 12 (HCP trial)

When Jody Hesch recently send me an email with a question about HANA, he received what everyone receives when sending email questions about HANA. The reply is a version of

HANA in a pocket, a skull and some dirty hands on Linux

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 14:00:00 +0000

DISCLAIMER: this blog describes unsupported and unlicensed use of the SAP HANA software. I describe my personal try-out of a hardware/software combination. It’s not in any way meant to be used productively or recommended to use the software in the way I describe.
If you loose data, waste life-time, money, your good mood or damage anything while trying to do what I describe: that’s all on you and there’s no guarantee, warranty or liability whatsoever from SAP or myself.

SAP HANA community continues to grow and so does the moderator team

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 14:00:05 +0000

Hello HANA community!

As of last week, we are happy to have a new moderator in our team: Michael Healy

Michael lives and works in Dublin, Ireland and works in the SAP Digital Business Services group helping customers around the globe with their SAP HANA implementations.

On multiple mistakes with IN conditions

Thu, 02 Jun 2016 14:00:59 +0000

Based on SAP HANA SPS 11

Update 1.6.2017 #

Retesting the APPLY_FILTER() approach on rev. 112.07 showed that it is now possible to simply hand APPLY_FILTER() an IN condition with a list of integers.

Modelling Learning Double Action or two things I just learned about modelling in SAP HANA SPS 11

Sun, 29 May 2016 14:00:16 +0000

Far fetched… #

A colleague asked me over a year ago (2015 and SPS 9 … sounds ancient now, I know) whether it is possible to leverage information models in a different SAP HANA instance via SDA (Smart Data Access - look it up in the documentation if you didn’t know this yet).

click – click – doubleclick and nothing happens

Wed, 13 Apr 2016 14:00:53 +0000

Today’s tidbit is one of those little dumb things that happen every now and then and when I think: “Great, now this doesn’t work… WTF…?” Usually that’s a bit frustrating for me as I like to think that I know how stuff works around here (here, meaning my work area, tools, etc.).

HANA dude analyses Python error and this happened next… (plus: something with Andy Warhol)

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 13:00:04 +0000

Fresh out of the Christmas/New Year vacation I yesterday received this question from one of my colleagues:

Hi Lars

I am trying to set up a demo to show MDC at FKOM.
I am trying to configure MDC via the Python script method – although I have an issue where I am missing a file – the error from the convertMDC.Py script says “no module named ConfigMgr.Py".
I remember you demoed this method at the Architecture Summit in Sydney – did you come across this issue?"

(He was talking about this nice event and the Multi Database Container feature of SAP HANA.)

Changes, News and Annoucement

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 14:00:15 +0000

Dear all

Since there had been quite big changes happening to me (which will affect my engagement here on SCN) I thought I pen down a few lines about that.

Fiddle riddle – Amazing: stuff gets faster and takes less space!

Sat, 15 Aug 2015 14:00:40 +0000

In Quick notes during a fiddle-session I played around with a table that contained all possible values for a date column.

To fill it I used a FOR LOOP with an INSERT and a COMMIT every 10000 records. That took 9:37 minutes for 3.652.061 records. That’s terrible performance and nothing that needs to be accepted with SAP HANA!

Quick notes during a fiddle-session

Sat, 15 Aug 2015 14:00:22 +0000

For a while now I am working as a Solution Architect for the SAP Custom Development organisation. This is the team you’d call when you want custom-built solutions that perfectly fit into your standard solution landscape.

The 7th Niceness of new toys’n’tools

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 14:00:37 +0000

If you’re not living behind some red moon and you’re reading this blog, you will likely be aware that SAP HANA SPS 10 had just been released.

With it also the SAP HANA Studio had been improved and extended.

Get your data running simple

Tue, 26 May 2015 14:00:15 +0000

SAP runs simple.

And SAP HANA also runs simple.

Down to the very internal coding this mantra has been followed.

And not just simple, but actually easy and here’s the proof - right out of the SAP HANA JoinEngine :lol:

The parameters you know

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:00:54 +0000

The age old question(s) #

It has been a long standing open question for many SAP HANA administrators:

“Where do I find a list of all the parameters that I can set in the .ini files?”

Free stuff! From the SAP HANA book!! Awesome!!!

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:00:18 +0000

Dear readers and fellow SCNers,

being the income-fixated greedy SAP Press author I am, I hardly ever fail to advertise the book Richard Bremer and I wrote and released last year (see Book Announcement: SAP HANA Administration for the whole ball of wax).

Community criss cross puzzle posting in multiple locales

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 14:00:24 +0000

SAP loves to make a point of eating its own dog food and so lowly SAP clerks like yours-truly are offered the experience to participate in multiple user communities be it SCN or one of the many SAP JAM groups.

Small surprises, well documented

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:00:56 +0000

We all noticed it: SAP HANA has grown. A lot, actually.

Let’s begin with a little sentimental look into the past #

What had begun as an in-memory database management system with some funky development artefacts like attribute-, analytic- and calculation views has grown into a huge feature packed platform for data management and processing.

Something new, something old…

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 14:00:00 +0000

People of the ABAP for SAP HANA tribe listen up! Or better: read up! :smile: #

When you logged in to your favorite SCN Space, did you notice any change?

SAP HANA DBA Ninja vs. GEIGOKAI

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 14:00:35 +0000

A common inquiry #

Last week I got two very similar question from colleagues in the consulting teams:

" […] We created a user (“john” with select / execute privileges on “SYS_BI & SYS_BIC” schema.

User can access data using bo tools and all looking good.

When the user logged into hana studio with his userid…

He was able to execute

“CREATE view “stest” as select * from <sys_bic> table…..

Is there any option to block user from creating views using sql script as above.[…]"

Changes to technical properties row/column store

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 14:00:04 +0000

I just came across SAP note 1850112 - Changes to technical properties row/column store again and found it to be an interesting and reassuring collection of design decisions taken over time.

Book Announcement: SAP HANA Administration

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 14:00:27 +0000

I’ve mentioned it before in a couple of threads and today I am happy to officially and proudly announce:

There is now a pack of paper with my name on, available and waiting to be bought by you.

Quantum mechanics in SAP HANA?

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 14:00:22 +0000

based on SAP HANA rev. 81

Just shortly before my vacation starts I thought I leave you with another pearl of knowledge… *cough*cough*

Don’t expect suspense or a proper three act structure - it’s just one of those techie blogs that you might put on your “read later” list and then forget about it… Anyway, that’s how I tell this story.

Is this the gym you pay for but never actually show up?

Thu, 07 Aug 2014 14:00:02 +0000

Seth Godin put it so nicely: Seth’s Blog: Analytics without action

" If you’re not prepared to change your diet or your workouts, don’t get on the scale."

meaning that if you don’t want to actually do something with the insight you gain with analytics then better don’t bother doing them.

Quick note on IDENTITY column in SAP HANA

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 14:00:35 +0000

Not sure you knew this already, but starting with SPS 8 (seemed to work with Rev. 74 as well), SAP HANA comes with an option to have an IDENTITY column in column store tables.

Of groups of serial shoppers…

Wed, 28 May 2014 14:00:03 +0000

based on SAP HANA revision 74

»> update 09.02.2016 «<

If you are trying to work on a similar problem, please make sure to also review the solutions posted in discussion Fetch the first record with 24 hr interval based on first record timestamp. The solutions posted there are much more efficient and solve the problem better in multiple ways.

You got the time?

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 14:00:25 +0000

based on HANA rev. 70

World Time Zones Map

A question came up about timezone handling in SAP HANA.

As you might know SAP HANA offers functions to deal with local time as well as with UTC based time and provides the means to convert between those two.

SAP HANA double-0 revision in “A secret present"

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 14:00:30 +0000

Let’s do this quick and painless!

From SPS 7 (rev. 70.00) SAP HANA doesn’t automatically create concatenated attributes for multi-column-joins anymore.

BANG!

There you go.

Just asked for it (Looking for more info on CONCAT_ATTRIBUTE, Free Space by Unload Columns or Alter Table for hidden concat_attribute columns… ) - just briefly after learning that these concat attributes were there in the first place - and now you got it.

HANA SPS 7 first dazzling highlights

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 14:00:27 +0000

Another half year passed and another SAP HANA SP has just been released.

SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 7 is out in the wild as revision 70.00 (double zero revision, yes Moneypenny :wink: ) and a lot of things had been changed, added and (hopefully) improved.

In the words of others…

Mon, 18 Nov 2013 14:00:47 +0000

If you are the kind of person who rather enjoys listening to people instead of reading through education material, then you might be interested in this:

http://events.sap.com/teched/en/session/8596

Behind this link you find the recording of my SAP TechED session RDP302 - Understanding SAP HANA Database performance, presented by my team lead and colleague Richard Bremer.

Meet me at SAP TechEd in Amsterdam

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 14:00:28 +0000

Let’s keep this brief and simple:

I’m going to be at the SAP TechEd EMEA in Amsterdam that will be on next week.
I’m going to deliver some sessions there, especially my very own RDP302 Understanding SAP HANA Database Performance.
There will be several networking sessions with me as well.

So, if you’re going to be there as well, this might be a chance to meet in person :smile: .

Quick note on Plan Visualization in NetWeaver

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:00:22 +0000

Ok, just a very quick note today with loads of screenshots and only a few lines of text. The core statement is (for the ones with little time to their avail):

Missing operations in PlanViz? Not for me! (or you)

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 14:00:44 +0000

based on revision 61 of SAP HANA and SAP HANA Studio

Dear web-diary…

Recently I looked into the execution of a simple information model and discussed it with some fellow CSA guys.

Advertisment – Webinar “Performance in SAP HANA Databases” slide deck

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 14:00:07 +0000

Dear all!

The slide deck for my last weeks Webinar Performance in SAP HANA Databases - Webinar Details are online and can be found here:

Performance in SAP HANA Databases - Webinar Presentation.

A little SAP HANA DBA note on too many trace files...

Sat, 04 May 2013 14:00:16 +0000

+++ update 7.10.2015 - SPS 10

Since this blog was originally published some time ago and many SAP HANA revisions passed and there is meanwhile a supported easy way to do housekeeping around trace files.

Back in the tar pit?

Sat, 04 May 2013 14:00:03 +0000

I’ve now been involved with a couple of SAP HANA projects and I am left astounded. #

Not only by the impressing performance and flexibility our product delivers for certain use cases. I’m much more astounded by the expected level of software maturity of the final project implementations.

SPS 6 ante portas – new features in SAP HANA Studio revision 55

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:00:27 +0000

Just recently our development team released revision 55 of SAP HANA Studio and I was very pleased to see how many improvements had been included this time.

Here’s a quick rundown of my favorites in no particular order:

Automatic testing of BW queries, anyone? Here you go!

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:00:57 +0000

Dear readers

This time I’m not presenting you any of my own work but instead want to advertise what my CSA colleague Tobias Kaufmann just published here on SCN:

Automatic Test of Queries with RS Trace Tool. (really well done Tobias!)

HANA quick note – checking my connections and using them securely …

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:00:49 +0000

based on revision 48 (SPS 5) of SAP HANA Studio and Database

I just browsed throught the updated SAP HANA Developer Guide, SPS 05, Ver. 1.1, 21.12.2012 (really that date? not even 12.12.12? :-) ) and found something pretty nice in there for ODBC and JDBC users.

Running up that hill – a quick note on improving SAP HANA

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:00:41 +0000

based on revision 48 (SPS 5) of SAP HANA Studio and Database

Maybe I’m a grouch about our software design from time to time. Maybe I’ve been working in support for too long and got the ‘problem glasses’ still on. I start using programs and features and rather often it doesn’t take too long that I think ’ oh, now that is awkward’ or ’ hope that this won’t make it into the final release’ (as I’m no developer/alpha/beta-tester, usually it DID make it into the release though…).

Show me the timelines, baby!

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:00:26 +0000

Based on revision 46 (SPS 5) of SAP HANA Studio and Database

Hello once again!

While reading through the recently released SPS 05 RKT material (here) (that is, IF you have access to this RKT material), specifically the “What’ New Admin & Monitoring” document I found that the authors mentioned that the plan visualization feature we got in SPS 04 had been improved by adding an execution timeline to the display.

SPS 5 quick note – on NULL values

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:00:32 +0000

Based on revision 45 (SPS 5) of SAP HANA Studio and Database

One thing I found a bit annoying with HANA had been the fact that it was not possible to go and change table definitions later on as easily as I was used to from other DBMS.

Say cheese… on taking snapshots with SAP HANA

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:00:32 +0000

Based on revision 45 (SPS 5) of SAP HANA Studio and Database

As projects with HANA (just like with any other technology) move on, at some point in time the requirement to perform tests and trainings comes up.

Quick note on cleaning up the SAP HANA Studio folders after upgrade installations

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:00:22 +0000

based on rev. 41 of SAP HANA Studio

Dear fellow SAP HANA users!

SAP HANA SPS5 has just been released which means it’s patch-o-clock for my system. As usual, the actual update procedure was straightforward and hassle-free. I still use the manual way to install the upgrade by running hdbsetup.exe - if you’re using the HANA software repository with automatic update enabled then you’re even better off.

You got to fight for your right to … setup tracing

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:00:12 +0000

Based on revision 41 of SAP HANA Studio and Database

Dear HANA database tribe,

I know the title of this is cheesy but the topic is actually so not exciting that I had to come up with something to draw your short attention span over

Travelling on to new exciting places...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:00:09 +0000

Dear all!

It’s been a while since my last activity here in SCN - and boy what a while it was :smile: .

In the last couple of months I was travelling to Canada, Australia and New Zealand - partly for SAP and partly as a long vacation Down Under.

How to setup SAP HANA SQL reference web search with your browser

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:00:49 +0000

UPDATE, 04.09.2017 #

UPDATE: The HANA documentation has been improved, extended and overhauled a couple of times since the last update to this blog nearly four years ago.

Collecting HANA support information easily

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:00:01 +0000

Dear HANA support activists and those who just happen to have to deal with SAP HANA!

When dealing with customer messages a large share of the work is related to collecting required data from the customer’s system. This takes time and requires a service connection to the customer system, which is unfortunately not always available.

Still no silver bullet

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:00:35 +0000

HANA is a great way to waste a lot of money.

Yes, I’m serious here. If you decide to implement this new platform at your site but just copy your coding 1:1 to HANA, you’re going to waste money.

Freshly found HANA Studio (rev. 26) treat…

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:00:43 +0000

Dear all,

I haven’t been able to come up with a blog on SCN now for quite some time, just because HANA really keeps me pretty busy.

Anyhow, this piece is something I already published SAP internally and since it was well liked and the work was already done, I thought: why not spend another 5 minutes and put it up to SCN? :wink: Hope you like it as well, although it really is a kind of quick’n’dirty post.

HANA backtrace 05/2012

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:00:39 +0000

Welcome back to the first instalment of HANA backtrace for 2012.
Let’s look at what I’ve seen and heard about SAP HANA lately:

Accessing data in a SAP HANA box from ABAP requires the well known database library (DBSL) and there are some new notes on this: SQL hints have a long tradition with nearly all databases and SAP HANA is no exception. Which of these and how are supported by the DBSL is explained in SAP note: #1622681 - DBSL hints for SAP HANA

Courses, Workshops, Certifications and the Future…

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:00:02 +0000

It’s been a quite busy time for me lately - which is the reason for the not published blog posts recently.

I’ve held and participated in a week of HANA related workshops in our US headquarter offices in Newtown Square, passed the BW certification exam the following week (in full jet lag condition) and delivered the BW standard course BW360 (BW Performance and Administration) the week afterwards.

HANA backtrace 45/2011

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:00:34 +0000

Ok, it’s been more than the planned week since my last post in this series (HANA backtrace 44/2011) but these are very busy times lately for a primary support guy like I am.

HANA backtrace 44/2011

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:00:36 +0000

This week I’m starting a new blog post series aimed at the readers that are technically interested in SAP HANA but don’t want to spend hours each week checking every new post, article, forum discussion or sap note about this hot topic.

HANA backup script hint… a little bit more security, please!

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:00:39 +0000

+++ UPDATE 23.11.2011 +++

After the release of revision 20 (SPS 03) of the HANA database, some more changes concerning command syntax and system object naming had been identified. The commands in this blog post have been adapted to reflect this.

HANA operational concept released to customers

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:00:29 +0000

During the past months, HANA made a fairly big wave in the SAP community. Looked like everybody wanted to get the hands onto this and gather some experience with the new piece of technology. With those, tons of questions arisen about how to operate such a system.