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… Read More » The time is now, isn't it?

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. Read More » Machine learnings of hana, odbc, and macos

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. Read More » Types of NULL

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… Read More » [NTM] HANA STUDIO NoClassDefFoundError: javax/xml/soap/SOAPException

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… Read More » Conditionally unique

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” Read More » New year, same issues and some tips.

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… Read More » SQL refactoring example

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… Read More » IF EXISTS would exist

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… Read More » How to know "all these things"