The new ArcGIS Enterprise Geodatabase for HANA – First Impressions

In this blog, I’ll look at what it takes to create an enterprise geodatabase for HANA, enable it and copy some feature classes from another enterprise geodatabase into the HANA one.  I’ll discuss the creation and loading of utility models in another post.

As many of you know, the ArcGIS platform has been able to access tables in HANA using query layers since ArcGIS Server and Desktop – 10.3 and Pro 1.2 were released in 2014.  This enabled spatial data in HANA to be consumed and updated by the ArcGIS platform.  As of ArcGIS Server 10.3.1, feature services against HANA were supported.  This is commonly known as an agile spatial datamart or “sidecar” scenario.

‘Hello Block’ – Hana Xs Blockchain Proof of Work Application

Welcome to all of you in my blog, this post is all about basic blockchain and how it works actually. I came across lots of blogs (not in sap) where people discussed lots about blockchain, the funny one was ‘how i explained blockchain to my grandma’. But i always wonder what it means to developer like me, how can we implement blockchain from scratch no more api’s lets build everything from scratch. Before jumping into code i would like to explain some core technical concept which is very important.

Using Topology for Data Analysis II

In this second part 1, we use Topological Data Analysis (TDA) on a dataset consisting on spatial information related to traffic. We’ll compare to usual “DBSCAN” method from Machine Learning.

DBSCAN is a method for finding clusters in data. It means Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise. It usually requires two parameters and the data: a radius, known as eps, and the minimum number of points required to form a cluster, that is the “density” part.

In any case, the parameters are unknown a priori. TDA in this case can help giving connected components as initial election of clusters and also, being robust against noise, these clusters will persist.

Using Topology for Data Analysis

When researching data we want to find features that help us understand the information. We look for insight in areas like Machine Learning or other fields in Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence. I want to present here a tool initially coming from Mathematics that can be used for exploratory data analysis and give some geometric insight before applying more sophisticated algorithms.

The tool I want to describe is Persistent Homology, member of a set of algorithms known as Topological Data Analysis. In this post I will describe the basic methodology when facing a common data analysis scenario: clustering.

Bringing Machine Learning (TensorFlow) to the enterprise with SAP HANA

In this blog I aim to provide an introduction to TensorFlow and the SAP HANA integration, give you an understanding of the landscape and outline the process for using External Machine Learning with HANA.

There’s plenty of hype around Machine Learning, Deep Learning and of course Artificial Intelligence (AI), but understanding the benefits in an enterprise context can be more challenging.  Being able to integrate the latest and greatest deep learning models into your enterprise via a high performance in-memory platform could provide a competitive advantage or perhaps just keep up with the competition?

SAP Automated Predictive Library (APL) Installation and configuration for SAP HANA

What is SAP HANA Automated Predictive Library (APL)?

SAP HANA APL is an Application Function Library (AFL) which lets you use the data mining capabilities of the SAP Predictive Analytics automated analytics engine on your customer datasets stored in SAP HANA.

Subsequent Document Splitting in S/4 HANA Finance 1709 (on Premise)

1. Purpose of this document

This document is for SAP FICO Application consultants. You would be able to implement subsequent document splitting in S/4 HANA with the help of this document. You must know already how document splitting works in general, it is sort of prerequisite.

HANA SDI | Smart Data Integration 2.0 – H2H Real-time Replication: Lessons Learned

In this blog entry I would like to convey some of the experiences we made throughout an SDI HANA to HANA (H2H) implementation project. To gather an understanding of the context, we will start off with the scenario description and solution architecture.

These are the items that will be covered throughout this blog:

SAP HANA Under The Hood: HDB – by the SAP HANA Academy

Introduction

The objective of this SAP HANA Under The Hood series is to provide some insights on particular SAP HANA topics. Like a mechanic, look under the hood and take apart a piece to examine its functioning.

Introduction To SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT)

New to Real Time Replication? with this blog I would like to share basic information on SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server i.e SLT running on the Netweaver platform .

SLT is the SAP first ETL tool that allows you to load and replicate data in real-time or schedule data from the source system and Non-Source System into SAP HANA Database.

Importing spatial map client included with SAP HANA Spatial

One of the advantages of SAP HANA Spatial is that it includes a map client and other content at no additional cost. This is an example of a spatial application created using the HERE map provided with SAP HANA.

Server-side SSL configuration on HANA for inter-node communication and System Replication using openSSL

I have been seeing a growing number of security related questions from customers. This blog will cover step-by-step configuration of SSL for internal communication and system replication. I hope this will help you guys out.

Security is one of the most significant feature any product should posses. In SAP HANA, we can precisely configure both internal and external communication.

Debugging HANA Procedures

1. Introduction to Debugging HANA Procedures in Eclipse

As we are moving towards developing applications more and more on the native HANA stack or use hybrid scenarios to combine both the worlds(BW&HANA), it is important to understand how to debug procedures using the eclipse “Debug” perspective.

New Video Tutorial Series: Studio and Cockpit

Some things are vintage and some things are just old. While we were digging through the archives, we found one of our older videos and decided to dust it off and give it an update. Who says something old can’t be new again? And speaking of new, if you’re starting to learn about streaming analytics and trying to figure out how to create, run, or test a project in studio, this is the perfect video for you.

Ready for more good news? Silly question, I know. That’s like asking if you want the last slice of pizza. Anyways, the good news is that this video is part of a tutorial series. So, after you’ve learned the basics of creating and working with projects in studio, you can then learn how to use cockpit to monitor those projects. The bad news? You’ll have to wait for the end of November for the second video to come out. You know the saying: good things come to those who wait!

HANA: First adaption with NVM

Since Sapphire this year SAP and Intel have announced some new details regarding Skylake and NVM (non-volatile memory).

With the new processors it should be possible to gain ~60% more performance when running HANA workload on it. Additionally new DIMMs based on 3D XPoint technology (NVM) help overcome the traditional I/O bottlenecks that slow data flows and limit application capacity and performance.

Till now no there were no details about how SAP will use this new technology. You can use it as filesystem or as in-memory format.

SAP HANA 2.0 XS Advanced: a host auto-failover installation/configuration example

Introduction

While the host-auto failover configuration with the core HANA Database is well known, the additional steps when XS Advanced (XSA) is installed are less well known. In below steps I give an example how it can be configured. When you read through the notes several decisions must be made for your own implementation, so your configuration may be different.

HANA Studio, Eclipse, Web workbench, Web IDE cloud and Web IDE for HANA

Since the introduction HANA platform, there are several Application development tools provided by SAP for the developers. They are,

1. HANA Studio
2. Eclipse
3. Web Worbench IDE
4. Web IDE cloud
5. Web IDE for HANA

Anonymization: Analyze sensitive data without compromising privacy

When is data truly anonymized? You can probably remember several cases where organizations such as public transport organizations or telecommunication providers published insufficiently “anonymized” data sets resulting in very damaging highly visible news headlines.

This is not to do any finger-pointing, because you know what? Anonymization is really hard! For many real-life use cases it isn’t enough to just substitute names with pseudonyms, or mask some of the values. With a little additional background knowledge it is often possible to identify the individuals you thought had been anonymized.

Connecting Streaming Analytics to Design Studio

SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio supports connections to streaming analytics as a data source for your applications and dashboards. It connects to streaming via the Web Services Provider and provides your application with real-time data. Before you create the connection though, there are a few things to set up on the streaming side: you’ll need to confirm your WSP configuration info, set streaming permissions, and enable web services for your project.

Error “License key could not be installed” on SAP HANA DB

Error: You face an error in HANA Studio/HDBSQL “License key could not be installed” on SAP HANA DB while installing license on existing DB already running with permanent license.

SAP HANA Cockpit 2.0 SP 04 What’s New – by the SAP HANA Academy

Introduction

Earlier this week (October 31, 2017), the latest support pack for SAP HANA cockpit 2.0 SP 04 was released-to-customer (RTC).

Support pack 04 introduces some nice new functionality to make administering SAP HANA systems easier, more secure, and more manageable for large scale deployments.

Configure Information Access in HANA Express to connect from Lumira or Analysis for Office

In this blog post, I’m documenting the steps I followed to enable Information Access in SAP HANA, express edition on my Google Cloud Platform machine.

Before we continue….

SAP HANA System Copy- Homogeneous On Multi Tenant Database

I know there is already very good blogs on this topic, The purpose of this blog is to explain the process of performing  a simple homogeneous system copy of a HANA (MDC-multi tenant database container) based system using the recovery of the source backup on the target HANA DB using HANA Studio and Using SWPM , I don’t find More blogs and details regarding homogeneous system copy or backup/Restore on HANA 2.0 on multi tenant database container.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS02: New client interface features

This is the first of a set of posts about new features in the SAP HANA client interfaces. Following posts discuss the new python and Go drivers, but all of these assume you have the SAP HANA Client package installed on your computer, so this post is a reminder of how to do that.

ABAP On HANA – My experience in SAP Inside Track

I would like to share my knowledge, which I gained from SIT (SAP Inside Track). Before getting started with a particular topic, I would like to share my experience on SIT, which was conducted in Hyderabad. It was a great pleasure for me to be a part of SIT. There were many valuable sessions throughout the day for 3 tracks (Technical, Functional and Analytical). As basically I am from technical side, the topics which they chosen are really excellent and presented in a very good manner.

Launch Classical UIs from HANA Cloud Portal

Until few weeks back, we could only use the Fiori Launchpad on HANA Cloud Platform to launch Fiori Apps deployed within the platform and also other contents via URLs and Mobile document. Fiori Launchpad is the entry point to access all SAP applications and we see many customers  using the Fiori Launchpad on HCP to launch standard and custom Fiori Apps. However, there are still lot of customers who have a requirement to also expose SAP GUI transactions and WebDynpro ABAP applications along with these HTML5 based Fiori Apps. They were looking for ways to provide one single access point to their end users in order to access all types of applications (on-premise/cloud apps). With the release of ABAP Add-on SAP_UI 751, it is now possible to launch even Classical UIs like SAP GUI (HTML) and WebDynpro ABAP applications which are available in the backend SAP system. In this blog, I am going to show the steps required to do this.

Unfair speed test – ABAP CDS on ASE vs HANA CDS on HANA

The title of the blog post says it all. This will be an unfair speed test.

If you’ve read the previous two posts of this series, you’ll note that I have successfully connected the ABAP 751 SP02 Developer Edition to a HANA Express 2.0 server as a secondary DB and used a simple ABAP program that helped replicate data over from ASE to HANA DB.

To perform this test, I created two very similar CDS, one on ABAP that will be selecting from the ABAP 751 server running on ASE and another directly on HANA hosted on my HANA Express Edition server.

Join cardinality setting in Calculation Views

Mechanism of join cardinality setting

“cardinality” is a setting that can be applied to joins in calculation views. It specifies how many matching entries for entries of one table exist in the other table of a join. It consist of two numbers, the left number describes the number of matching entries for entries of the right table while the right number describes the number of matching entries for entries of the left table. As an example, assume a join on field “employee” between Table 1 (left table) and Table 2 (right table). A join cardinality of “1..n” specifies that Table 2 has at most 1 matching entry in Table 1. Conversely, each entry in Table 1 might have 0 to n matching entries in Table 2. The symbol “n” stands here for an arbitrary positive number. For example, entry “Alice” in Table 1 might have 0, 1, or an arbitrary number of matches in Table 2. Take another example “1..1”. This indicates that each entry in Table 1, e.g., entry “Alice” of Table 1 has 0, or 1 matching entry in Table 2. Analogously, “Alice” of Table 2 has also at most 1 match in Table 1.

Simple sql table export in ABAP for HANA

Idea was to play with HANA and to try it’s functionality for educational purposes.

For data extraction I wrote a simple ABAP Report, which extracts selected tables with its data and prepares sql script for import.

Here is a source code (s. attached file).

Here is a screenshot of selection screen.

HANA Savepoint Analysis

1.What are savepoints?

◉ Savepoints are required to synchronize changes in memory with the persistency on disk level. All modified pages of row and column store are written to disk during a savepoint.
◉ Each SAP HANA host and service has its own savepoints.
◉ The data belonging to a savepoint represents a consistent state of the data on disk and remains untouched until the next savepoint operation has been completed.

Apache Hadoop as NLS solution for BW/HANA Part 2

For part 1 : Apache Hadoop as NLS solution for SAP HANA Part 1

After searching the internet for hours and days, trying to figure out the HANA and Hadoop integration process, I realized that there are a number of articles out there that talk about the Why’s the What’s and the Who’s of the process but not many have delved into the “How” aspect of it. So here is my humble attempt.

Demystifying SAP Database Migration tools for your SAP HANA migration and Cloud Adoption

This knowledge demystifies SAP Migration tools and its technology to facilitate your SAP HANA migration or Cloud adoption by helping you to define and choose the most appropriate SAP migration tool & strategy.

Apache Hadoop as NLS solution for SAP HANA Part 1

Introduction:

Apache Hadoop has become the poster child for big data largely due to its high scalability analytics platform capable of processing large volumes of structured and unstructured data. SAP HANA on the other hand, has gained ground as the leading in memory data analytics platform that lets you accelerate business processes and deliver quantifiable business intelligence at lightening speed. Both these database platforms are independent of each other and have pros and cons which make them a perfect fit for a long term sustainable high performance data lake strategy for any large multinational corporation.

AMDP based BEx Customer HANA Exit

With the release of the AS ABAP 7.4 many new capabilities were introduced, one of them is the AMDP methodology. This methodology is transformational as developers can leverage the best of both ABAP and SQL programming language to build models and applications. SAP BW on HANA, S/4 HANA embedded BW and BW/4 HANA can also take benefit from this framework.

SAP HANA MRP Live BADI Usage

SAP continues to improve its ERP products to HANA technology gradually. One of the most critical product is that instead of the classic MRP, it now becomes a new product as “MRP Live“. For the benefit of HANA’s speed and efficiency, MRP Live is available.

Such changes and innovations have always had advantages and disadvantages as well. These changes are especially important for backend developers. The biggest advantage of MRP Live is speed and performance, the biggest disadvantage is the length of development time. Even for a simple customer demand, we may need to write dozens of lines of code. This situation will change according to needs, of course, but it seems that we will spend much more time for according to the previous development environment and language as known SAP GUI and ABAP. MRP live is fully developed with ABAP managed database procedure(AMDP) and also for enhancements AMDP BADIs is used for MRP Live HANA development with top-down approach.

Step by Step Hierarchies in S/4 HANA Analytics

I am going to show step by step procedure to display hierarchies in S/4 using analytical CDS views. I will use manger employee hierarchy as an example here.

To achieve this you need:

◉ A dimension view with an employee as key, and his manager as attribute, and optionally some time-dependency information; this view gets the @Hierarchy annotations.

Code Push Down for HANA Starts with ABAP Open SQL

What is Code Push Down?

One of the key differences for developing applications in ABAP for HANA is that you can push down data intense computations and calculations to the HANA DB layer instead bringing all the data to the ABAP layer and the processing the data to do computations. This is what is termed as Code-to-Data paradigm in the context of developing ABAP applications optimized for HANA.

Under the HANA hood of an ABAP Managed Database Procedure

I’ve been looking into ABAP managed database procedures for HANA recently and decided to take a look at what’s actually created under the hood in the HANA database when an AMDP is created.

I created a small test class in our CRM on HANA system with a method to read a couple of columns from the crmd_orderadm_h table using sqlscript. The method takes one input parameter IV_OBJECT_ID and has one export parameter ET_ORDER.

Hana DB Row Store Reorganization

How To Perform Hana DB Row Store Reorganization

Row store memory size is a lot bigger than the actual data size in row store and shows high fragmentation ratio

A row store table requires more memory to store records, the table takes a free page from existing segments. If no segment has a free page, a new segment is allocated. Deleting a large number of records may result in a number of sparse segments. In such a case, row store reorganization is very useful and can be performed for memory compaction.

SAP HANA System Copy- Homogeneous Recovery Method Using HANA Studio

SAP HANA system copy Procedure- Below is the HANA System copy using Recovery method from PRD to QAS using Hana Studio

• Take the backup of HANA PRD system
• Copy/Move the backup form PRD Host to QAS Host
• Ensure that QAS is having enough space for Backup.
• Login to Hana Studio of QAS system with ID “SYSTEM”.
• After Login to QAS system, go to Backup and recovery option.

Column Encryption Decryption on HANA

The last project I’m working on, we have some special requirements to secure sensitive customer data(e.g. social security number, driver license number, credit card number, etc) with encryption and decryption to protect it from data breach. It has nothing to do with recent data breach at Equifax, the client is keen to protect customer sensitive data for a long time before migrating to HANA. Since the customer data security has become such a hot topic after the Equifax data breach, I think it is worth sharing the information with the community.

Alexa, ask (on-Prem) HANA …

Voice Assistants such as Apple Siri, Google Home, Amazon Echo and Microsoft Cortana are coming around to be a common sight in various personal aspects. We often use them for asking about weather and news updates, looking up local businesses, getting directions, etc. It is indeed a convenient user interface for on-demand updates without having to open up an app, sign-in, navigate menus, etc.

This article presents a general architecture for enterprises that can leverage SAP Cloud Platform to integrate Amazon Alexa to on-Prem SAP applications, specifically SAP HANA in this case.

Unassigned Member Null Handling Hierarchy in Calculation View

Not Assigned Members enabled hierarchies with SAP HANA Calculation Views

Often occurs that there will be entries in fact table for which corresponding master data doesn’t exist, for instance sales records for unregistered customers. In such cases when the two tables joined together with referential integrity, sales data for unregistered customers will be lost. Using the feature Unassigned Member Null Handling in hierarchy, we can see the whole data in a hierarchical fashion without any loss of data wherein the not assigned member/unregistered customer details will be grouped under a node.

Getting started with Internet of Things Applications: Device Management

The world is talking about Internet of Things. IoT has become rapidly growing topic of discussion at workplace and among-st the tech savvy engineers. Well IoT is nothing but connecting any device which can be switched on and off with Internet.

Being a HANA consulant tried my hands on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform for IoT.

Node.js Connecting to HANA + Mongo + Neo4J

I tried to document my recent learnings on consuming different kinds of data, such as HANA database, MongoDB (Document Store), Neo4j DB (Graph Database), Google Map APIs using Node.js. This blog is my learning code to built few use cases to understand the possibilities of using different APIs. I am definite that there are better of ways of coding, better ways of connecting to different databases (like connecting to Mongo or PostgreSQL using cloud foundry backing services) or using Cloud connectors.

Search UI on HANA

To search on the data present in HANA, there are some applications already available.

Recently a blog was published on Enterprise Search UI on HANA which is built using SAPUI5 and is very simple to use.

Once the setup is done, the UI can be launched using the URL which looks some like:

Install SHINE for XSA on SAP HANA 2.0 Express Edition SPS02

The installation of SHINE (SAP HANA Interactive Education) for SAP HANA XSA on SAP HANA Express Edition 2.0 SPS02 is now more or less straightforward in comparison to SPS00. Therefore it is time for an updated post about the installation process of SHINE for XSA.

SHINE for XSA is the reference implementation of SAP HANA XS Advanced Programming Model which is a Cloud Foundry compatible programming model implemented on SAP HANA Platform. Main programming languages are JavaScript and/or Java. Defintely worth a look for every developer on this possible future development option. If you interested in deploying SHINE on SAP Cloud Foundry and want more insights on single SHINE parts.

Basis Engineers’ Ultimate Guide for SAP Debugging

I think that every Basis engineer and SAP developer will agree with me when I say:

It can be REALLY painful to find the root cause of an issue in a complex SAP system.

CDS Associations and Propagation with SQL in SAP HANA

As Part of HANA 1.0 SPS11, the New feature called CDS Associations implementation with the help of SQL instead having the dependency of CDS to create association among Database objects like tables, views.

Later as part of HANA 2.0 SPS00, an interesting new feature and an enhancement of the above one where the user is allowed to propagate the association while creating views.

Reducing workload on HANA hosts by routing end user query

SAP HANA is known for its versatile capabilities as a database as well as a platform by providing solution for varied end user requirements.

HANA appliance has evolved from storing data in column/row store fashion towards serving as a data container for unstructured data too and helping end user to transform data set like xml and JSON to relational data structure and vice versa with at most ease.

Being a hub of solution for all the end user needs, SAP HANA also helps end user to avail the flexibility in query handling and fine tuning the performance of his/her operations performed on the database.

SAP HANA Smart Data Integrator on SAP HANA, express edition (HXE)

High level architecture

Any data integration must procure data and output data or information. To address the procurement and output of data there are components that need to play in harmony. Primary components of SAP HANA Smart Data Integration are:

Bring the Power of SAP HANA to SAP (Sybase) Adaptive Server Enterprise Applications

Legacy Adaptive Server customers totally understand and appreciate the technical and economic benefits of a reporting database. Using replication server, many Adaptive Server customers are replicating to an Adaptive server reporting instance and running their reports against the reporting copy. Some are replicating into analytical engines like SAP IQ or third party databases like Netezza. But this requires rethinking and re-writing their Transact-SQL reporting applications and procedures.

General information about Data Aging

Many people heard about data aging in context of HANA. You see it on a lot of SAP slides with DLM (Data Lifecycle Management) or in BoH / S/4HANA context, books about HANA and especially in the result of the HANA ABAP sizing reports. In my opinion the naming here – “clean-up” – is a little bit  misleading. It is a bit more than just housekeeping and lot of things you have to pay attention to.

Technical details about data aging

If you successfully finished my last blog post about data aging ‘General Iinformation about data aging’ it is time for the deep dive. How SAP has implement it and how it works in detail.

As you already have read partitioning is an elementary part of data aging process to separate the current from the historical. Therefor range partitioning is used with an additional column called ‘_DATAAGING’:

Going for the Gold with a New Data Management Platform for Digital Transformation

As an avid fan of the Olympic games, I was reminded by the 2016 Rio games of the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger). Since their inception in 1896, the goal of the modern Olympics has been to provide an international forum where the world’s elite athletes could come together and compete. That is why the founder of modern Olympics Pierre de Coubertin said that “athletes need freedom of excess. That is why we gave them this motto … a motto for people who dare to try to break records.”

Salesforce.com adapter for SAP SDI: replication of Salesforce data into HANA tables.

1. Overview

The Advantco SFDC adapter is an adapter for SAP HANA Smart Data Integration (SDI), its purpose is to batch load or to replicate changed data in real time from Salesforce.com to the SAP HANA tables.

This blog describes in detail how to replicate Account data from Salesforce.com in HANA tables.

Working with the predictive analysis library in HANA 2.0 SPS02

HANA 2.0 SPS 02 is now available and there have been a number of important updates to the predictive analysis library (PAL). The focus is on ease-of-use rather than introducing a bunch of new algorithms (though there are a couple).

In this blog I’ll introduce the updates and show you where to find hands-on tutorial videos:

General information about Data Aging

Many people heard about data aging in context of HANA. You see it on a lot of SAP slides with DLM (Data Lifecycle Management) or in BoH / S/4HANA context, books about HANA and especially in the result of the HANA ABAP sizing reports. In my opinion the naming here – “clean-up” – is a little bit  misleading. It is a bit more than just housekeeping and lot of things you have to pay attention to.

Introducing SAP HANA Cloud Platform predictive services

Here at the SAP HANA Academy we’ve put together a series of hands-on video tutorials that show the basics of predictive services from both an admin and developer perspective.

The first video tutorial covers getting started topics such as where to find the documentation.

Tutorials 2,3 & 4 cover the one time setup process for new HCP landscapes – admin tasks.

If you just want to get a feel for how to develop with predictive services you can jump straight into tutorial #5 “First Steps”.

Size of log backup, complete data backup in HANA

Basic information:

Backup performed for

Data

The data volume contains the data from the last completed Savepoint.

Getting a Permanent License Key for SAP HANA Streaming Analytics

When you first install SAP HANA streaming analytics, a temporary license is automatically installed so you can run streaming analytics for 90 days. After that, you’ll need to request and install a permanent license, which you can do using HANA cockpit and the SAP Support Portal. Here’s how:

1. Log into SAP HANA cockpit and connect to your system as a user with the LICENSE ADMIN system privilege

2. From the system overview page, scroll down and click Manage system licenses. This will give you some important system info that you’ll need to request a license.

Change Master/Shadow role of cloud connector manually

High Availability configuration requires Master-Shadow cloud connector. While taking over, sometimes in exceptional situations, where both of cloud connector in High Availability configuration are shadow role/master role.  In case such bad-configuration occurs, SCP connection will be lost and Satellite systems cannot connect to SAP cloud platform (formerly known as HANA cloud Platform)

Calling SOAP Web Service from HANA XSJS

I am writing this blog to share my experience and code snippets for calling a SOAP Web Service from XSJS, creating a XML input (based on input parameters) and understanding the XML response to build a JSON output of your XSJS service.

Firstly, the xshttpdest file should be in the same folder, as your XSJS file (which has code calling the SOAP Web Service, in our case). It is not just the main package, but also the same folder/sub package.

Video Roundup: Troubleshooting, Installing, Provisioning, the List Goes On…

The videos below all fall into one of these categories:

1. Troubleshooting
2. Installation and setup
3. Informational (backup and restore, adapters, streaming lite)
4. What’s new?

SAP HANA High Availability with Minimal Setup (a step by step procedure)

This blog gives you information about the minimal setup required for HANA high Availability. How to add standby host and perform a failover (simulation). How services, hosts and Volumes looks like before and after failover.

For high availability, a distributed HANA (scale out) setup is required.

The minimal setup for a scale out is 2 servers (one worker, one standby).

Flags to enforce the push-down of filters (available SAP Web IDE since SAP HANA 2.0 SPS02)

With HANA Data Modeling Tools SPS02 in SAP Web IDE two new flags were introduced that enforce the push-down of filters to lower nodes in specific situations in which filter push-down would not happen per default. One flag is available in Rank nodes. The other flag is available in all nodes but only has an effect if the respective node is consumed by more than one succeeding node.

HANA Window Functions: Delivery Block Duration Example

Introduction

I have been working with databases for ages, and always thought they had little limitations, except for the possibilities to calculate across rows. In basic SQL it’s not possible to refer to values in other rows. This make some calculations very hard or even impossible.

Working now a lot with the SAP HANA database, I learned about window functions which really opened a lot of new possibilities.

Public Synonyms in SAP HANA

Introduction:

This blog is about my experience working on synonyms in a HANA migration project.

This blog will give you an idea of how synonyms behave in different situations and how to overcome them.

Leveraging Predictive Analytics in IT Departments

Leveraging Predictive Analytics in IT

Being in analytics I feel sort of bad for IT. They do a ton of work to deploy BI for their business users, but don’t typically benefit since they’re not the end-user.

But we’ve seen a shift where IT is starting to better leverage the analytical capabilities used by the business.

Working with SAP HANA Parent Child Hierarchies

A parent child relationships can be used to model many types of hierarchy, including ragged hierarchies, balanced hierarchies, and unbalanced hierarchies.

SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) originally required us to use parent child hierarchies. Often when connecting live to HANA, you could be modeling your hierarchies in this way.

Below, we can see an example organisational structure. This is an unbalanced hierarchy as the depth of the hierarchy varies depending which part of the organisation you look at.

Using Predictive Analytics and Python on SAP Cloud Platform HANA database – Part 1

I was recently working with a customer who was interested in doing Predictive Analytics on top of the HANA database which they recently subscribed to on SAP Cloud Platform. They already have an on-premise server for Predictive Suite and have been using their tools against an on-premise HANA database. I this blog, I wanted to share my experience to highlight how easy it is to do the same on a HANA database on the Cloud Platform.

IoT in SAP HANA Cloud Platform & Microsoft Azure

Business Vision:

With a little opinion based on both architectures proposals and with the real experience in integration paradigm:

• Avoiding the confusion about: How do you determine that you are implementing a “IoT concept” and not just another “integration point of view”.

Processing XML data in SAP HANA

New capabilities in SAP HANA are introduced with every SP. One such important one is the ability to process XML data which has been introduced with SAP HANA 2.0 SPS1 and SPS2.

XML is in common use for interchange of data over the Internet. Thus, applications require data in xml format for communication with other entities. With the data stored in the RDMS, as SAP HANA, in relational mode as tables, the application layer requires to process the data and render in the format which could be used for communication. Similarly, when the data reaches the application layer, it needs to again process this data, but now to be able to store in the database as tables (format understood by the RDBMS).

ABAP on HANA Optimization – Step by Step Remediation

1. STEP BY STEP TUNE YOUR CUSTOM ABAP CODE – HANAFIED

1.1 Introduction

Before Migrating to Suite on HANA or ABAP on HANA environment we need to analyse which of my ABAP code must be changed to avoid potential functional issues. In general existing ABAP code runs on SAP HANA as before Only if ABAP code relies on technical specifics of the old database, ABAP code changes might be necessary.

The Journey to SAP HANA or S/4HANA: Choose Your Own Adventure

For any company moving to SAP HANA or S/4HANA, choosing a data management strategy is an essential part of the journey. The first step on the path to migration, though, is choosing which path to take. And of course, like any journey, a properly planned itinerary and a map are critical to getting to your intended destination.

SAP HANA 2.0 Express Edition, Transport between Tenants

This blog is about how to transport a User-Role between two Tenants within one instance of SAP HANA 2.0 Express.

To enlarge the pictures press STRG++ to Zoom In and STRG– to Zoom Out.

How to download & install SAP HANA Express is explained in this Youtube-Video

I am using the Package “Server only virtual machine”.

Streaming Analytics: Developing in SAP Web IDE, 2.0 SP 02 Edition

Since its introduction in 1.0 SP 12, the streaming plugin for SAP Web IDE has been improving release to release. With 2.0 SP 02 come more new features and enhancements for both the plugin and the streaming runtime tool, which should make your development, administration, and monitoring through these tools just a little bit easier.

Experience of my first SAP HANA project

INTRODUCTION

This blog is related to few of  my experience working on  SAP HANA. It has the problems that I faced during a migration project (from Oracle PL/SQL to SAP HANA SQL Script) , in which I am working on and the possible solutions for those problems.

How Analytics can enhance traditional IT Monitoring

According to EMA, the average IT organization has more than 10 monitoring tools. Often when speaking to IT departments about SAP IT Operations Analytics (SAP ITOA) they are concerned about adding yet another monitoring tool…

But IT Operations differs from traditional monitoring and can enrich what most organizations are doing.

Using Busines Data for Better IT Outcomes

SAP IT Operations Analytics (SAP ITOA) brings a lot of value to IT organizations:

• Embedded Predictive Analytics makes it easy to anticipate and respond to issues before they happen
• Realtime monitoring and alerting lets IT respond immediately when issues do occur
• A holistic view helps simplify root-cause analysis and reduce meantime to resolution

Removing invalid and non-printable characters in HANA based BW transformation

Most customers know the problem that invalid characters can be found in data records. Data load or DSO activation for char type InfoObjects can fail due to permitted or non-printable characters in BW.

There exist several solutions for this problem. Some customer uses function module calls in ABAP transformations for example RSKC_CHAVL_OF_IOBJ_CHECK or RSKC_ALLOWED_CHAR_GET. Other implement field routines with ABAP like

REPLACE ALL OCCURRENCES OF REGEX '[^[:print:]]' IN RESULT
       WITH 'replace_char'
       IGNORING CASE.

Implementing Graphical Hierarchy view for Profit Center in SAP HANA

This blog is about Standard hierarchy ,Standard hierarchy is a tree structure for grouping all profit centers which belong to a controlling area. When creating a Profit Center, you must assign it to a group (node) of the standard hierarchy.

Below is the sample ProfitCenter Hierarchy how it looks in SAP ECC.

Smart Data Streaming: Guaranteed Delivery Part 1

It’s common for streaming projects to use guaranteed delivery, or GD, which is a delivery mechanism that ensures all of the data going into a project, and all of the data processed by a project, reaches its destination – even if the client somehow becomes disconnected when the data is produced. Using log stores and checkpoints, GD works with streams, windows, as well as SDK publishers and subscribers, to prevent data loss.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS02 new feature: Go language driver

Introduction

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It’s a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS02 new feature: updated python driver

Introduction

As background: there have been two HANA python drivers available for some time:

• The python driver included with the SAP HANA Client package (hdbcli). The client package included a distribution of python 2.7 and the driver works only with that distribution.
• The python driver available on github (pyHDB). This driver is implemented in pure python, and worked with both python 2 and 3, but is not fully supported by SAP.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 02: New Developer Features; Database Development

In this blog, I would like to introduce you to the new features for the database developer in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 02.  We will focus on the database development topic including Core Data Services, as well as SQLScript.

Core Data Services(CDS)

Simplified security management in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS02

Managing secure data access and configuring systems securely are critical tasks in operating business systems today. SAP HANA has security built into its core, with a comprehensive framework and tooling for authentication and single sign-on, authorization and role management, user and identity management, audit logging, secure configuration and encryption.

How To Create AMDP With Parameters In ABAP Modular Perspective In SAP HANA

What are AMDPs…

ABAP Managed Database Procedures are a new feature in AS ABAP allowing developers to write database procedures directly in ABAP. You can think of a Database Procedure as a function stored and executed in the database. The implementation language varies from one database system to another. In SAP HANA it is SQL Script. Using AMDP allows developers to create and execute those database procedures in the ABAP environment using ABAP methods and ABAP data types.

A practical example of ABAP on HANA optimization

A practical example of HANA optimization

In this blog, I’ll try to recap my journey through the land of SELECT’s and internal tables towards the realm of HANA. I wanted to take a slow-performing ABAP, not something from a tutorial or playground module from SAP, but something “real”, tangible, a proper “pain point”, and describe how it can be converted to using HANA view(s).

CDS view performance analysis using PlanViz in HANA studio

I am a newbie in CDS performance area and frequently I meet with some “weird” performance behavior which makes me really confused. After I consulted with performance experts, it turns out that all those “strange” behavior has their root cause and could be well explained – no strange at all but just works as designed! I will share with my finding and learning with you through this blog.

Get your SSH keys to HANA Express instance in Google Cloud Platform

You’ve been watching this SAP CodeTalk or following this tutorial on how to setup your SAP HANA, express edition, (or HXE) with the Google Cloud Launcher. Now you would like to connect to the instance from some SSH client, such as PuTTY or the console on your Mac or Linux computer.

You need the SSH keys, but where are they? If this is your first project and you have not generated your keys before, chances are that you won’t find them in your .ssh folder as this tutorial indicates:

SAP HANA – Detailed Memory Analysis Walkthrough

Introduction

In this exercise, I’ll give a walkthrough on how to perform a top down investigation on high & peak HANA memory usage and its associate top memory consumers with the aid of HANA SQL scripts attached to SAP Note 1969700 – SQL Statement Collection for SAP HANA and Statistics data (History / Current) collected by ESS / SSS (Mandatory. Recommended retention = 49 days)

I’m taking below example where I was asked to perform a memory analysis on a productive system where there was a spike of peak memory usage, around 5.9TB.

Bridging two worlds : Integration of SAP and Hadoop Ecosystems

Proliferation of web applications, social media and internet-of-things coupled with large-scale digitalization of business processes has lead to an explosive growth in generation of raw data. Enterprises across the industries are starting to recognize every form of data as a strategic asset and increasingly leveraging it for complex data driven business decisions. Big Data solutions are being used to realize enterprise ‘data lakes’, storing processed or raw data from all available sources and powering a variety of applications/use-cases.

Dedicated SAP HANA XS Advanced Runtime host installation through resident hdblcm on HANA 2 SPS 01

In this blog I will cover installation of XS Advanced Runtime on a dedicated host on HANA 2 SPS 01. Even though my example covers HANA 2 SPS 01, the process is similar on HANA 1 SPS 11+.

Prerequisites:

1. The SAP HANA system has been installed with its server software on a shared file system (export options rw, no_root_squash).
2. The host has access to the installation directories <sapmnt> and <sapmnt>/<SID>.

HANA MDC cross-database access

In a multi tenant database setup for HANA, the tenants are isolated from each other and can not see the content in other tenants by default. But there can be need to access some data from the other tenant. This can be accomplished using a cross-database access functionality that is provided by HANA.

The first thing to know about cross-database access is that it only allows SELECT access to data from the source database.

Creating CDS/EDM views from RAW HANA SQL TABLES

If you need to create a CDS/EDM views from raw SQL HANA tables..here is a script. There seems to be no automatic utility in HANA studio.

The below assumes you know SQL and how to create a CDS/EDM view.

A definition of a SQL table, which need to be converted.

HANA XS Core Data Services (CDS) – Troubleshooting, tips and tricks

Today I have decided to create the blog post for people who are struggling with Cloud Platform and HANA XS. My googling skills revealed that the blog posts available here do not tell you important things that you have to know. E.g. there are even mistakes in the code and you should invest your precious time to solve them.

I hope, this blog article will be interesting and helpful for you as it might be interesting for me in cast I forget something. It will be also great if developers read it and improve the product (doesn’t matter which one, but simply improve). By the way, I plan to update the article as long as I will be working with CDS.

Successful implementation of Cumulative Sum in SAP HANA

A cumulative sum is a sequence of partial sums of a given sequence. For example, the cumulative sums of the sequence {a, b, c, ...} are a, a+b, a+b+c, .....Cumulative sums.

Cumulative Sum: Cumulative sums, or running totals, are used to display the total sum of data as it grows with time (or any other series or progression). This lets you view the total contribution so far of a given measure against time.

SAP MII connection to External HANA database

SAP MII (Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence) is a very powerful tool provided by SAP to connect shop floor systems (PLC / SCADA / Historians) to ERP (SAP ECC / SAP S/4 HANA). By such seamless integration between shop floor and ERP systems, it provides customers better visibility in terms of manufacturing production and it helps in reducing operational costs by providing various dashboards, KPI monitoring and visual representation of machine data. In today’s world where everyone is talking and researching about IoT and the massive amount of data that any manufacturing company is going to deal with, the expectation from the SAP MII customers is to handle huge volume of time-series and tabular data collected from operations/PLCs at the manufacturing plants to perform long-term trend and regression analysis on it near real time. Moreover, customers also want to predict and prevent operational issues such as machine downtimes, material quality and performance bottlenecks in production lines.

PIVOT Data in HANA

In my previous blog I have covered how to UNPIVOT data in HANA, in this blog I am covering how to PIVOT data in HANA.

While converting MS-SQL procedures into HANA procedures, we came across PIVOT statement in one of the select query, unfortunately HANA SQL Script does not support PIVOT operation hence we had to come up with alternative approach. In this blog I will cover two approaches to PIVOT data in HANA

1. Using graphical calculation view
2. Using HANA SQL Script

SAP Hana 2.0 SP1 – Smart Data Streaming & DT Combined with Raspberry Pi Part-3

Build Smart Data Streaming project

The virtual scenario to construct my project is the following:
I have several workspace locations such as, store, Factory, Library … across different country that I would like to monitor the temperature, humidity, air quality and air density.

Among this location, I want to track only my IT Room location based in Mexico where 12 employees are working in this place with many computers.

SAP Hana 2.0 SP1 – Smart Data Streaming & DT Combined with Raspberry Pi Part-2

Continued SAP Hana 2.0 SP1 – Smart Data Streaming & DT Combined with Raspberry Pi Part-1

Install Smart Data Streaming and add the service to the tenant

Smart Data Streaming installation for my scenario consist of several package software to downloads such as:

Note: I will not cover the SDS Studio installation portion but it’s already installed on my side

SAP Hana 2.0 SP1 – Smart Data Streaming & DT Combined with Raspberry Pi Part - 1

In my documentation, I will explain and detail how install and configure SAP Hana 2.0 SP1 with Smart Data Streaming and Dynamic Tiering combined on the same server.

For my data collection, I will connect my Raspberry PI which use GrovePI for sensor to my environment, and will build a custom XS application to visualize the data captured.

For my setup, I’ll use my own lab on VMware VSphere 6.5, run SAP Hana 2.0 SP1 environment and components, Raspberry PI 3 Model B with GrovePI+ and sensors.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01 – What’s the big deal?

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01 – What’s the big deal?

If you are an SAP system administrator like myself, the last thing you would consider exciting is yet another HANA database update – let’s face it, we all perform HANA patching at such a rate that our managers now consider it to be common place.

HANA 2.0 Doc Store Service

Overview

HANA so far has been excellent providing Row and column store But as they say, there is always scope of improvement and SAP proving it again.

SAP HANA: Material Classification Data with LongText into HANA

In this Blog, I want to show How to bring Material Classification Data along with LongText into HANA.

As per example below, I want to bring all the Classification Data for this Material along with LongText.

This Below screenshot is from MM03 and you can see how the Classification Data is defines with Longtext.

ECC Version: 618.

Explaining SAP HANA Revision Strategy

SAP HANA is a dynamic product and that’s why it is important to know the best way to keep your SAP HANA database maintained based on your situation.

There are several terms used to describe parts of the SAP HANA revision strategy.

• SAP HANA Revisions: “Revision” refers to packages containing fixes for core SAP HANA components such as SAP HANA database, SAP HANA Studio, SAP HANA Clients, AFLs, SDA and HWCC tool.

HANA 2 and two riddle errors

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”. 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.

Downloading the HANA Cockpit 2.0 package is a breeze as long as you do it via a proper broadband connection.

HANA Views & SQL – Technical Performance Optimization

BW on HANA can easily enable SQL data access for third party tools, using the “External SAP HANA View” flag to automatically generate Calculation Views out of BW objects. However, Consuming multidimensional BW scenarios through relational SQL paradigm can lead to quite some issues with performance. This blog is about a few basic technical tips, which help to enhance runtime performance. Tested with BW 7.5 on HANA SPS 10, 11 and 12.

Making use of an Active/Active (read only) HANA database in S/4 HANA part 3: The client decides

In the preceding part of this blog series, I introduced the client imperative: The client decides if it is willing to accept data from the SAP HANA secondary database, which may have a few seconds of delay. Let me now have a more detailed look at this.

Orchestrated nZDM for SAP HANA with a single TakeOver

Using the powerful Custom Process engine, SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) delivers a lot of pre-built processes to automate operations for SAP HANA. One of the best examples is the “near Zero Downtime Maintenance for SAP HANA” operation which helps you perform maintenance or upgrade activities for your SAP HANA setup while taking care of the System Replication, as well as of users and applications.

Make your HANA 2.0 SPS 01, express edition work on VirtualBox

In this blog, I am sharing my experience with making HANA 2.0 SPS 01, express edition work on VirtualBox. Many steps are like making it work on VMware, but I will point out some important differences.

To start with, after downloading the OWA file, I Import it as an Appliance into VirtualBox:

Making use of an Active/Active (read only) HANA database in S/4 HANA part 2: Architecture Overview

In the first part if this blog series I described the motivation to use a secondary SAP HANA database for executing expensive analytical queries. In block diagrams, I showed the major building blocks:

Making use of an Active/Active (read only) HANA database in S/4 HANA

Introduction

At SAP, we thought about creating additional benefit for customers who run SAP S/4HANA on premise.

Many of them in fact run two SAP HANA databases in a SAP HANA system replication setup: the productive SAP HANA database (aka the primary SAP HANA database), and an additional ‘hot standby’ SAP HANA database (aka the secondary SAP HANA database). The latter is part of their high availability strategy and allows business continuity in case of a failure of the primary SAP HANA node.

Configuring BI Platform to open Lumira discovery HANA document created using OLAP HANA HTTPs connection

Lumira 2.0 supports HANA live connectivity via INA over HTTP/HTTPS. Know more on how to get your user have the relevant rights and roles http://www.saphanacentral.com/2017/06/step-by-step-how-to-create-local-sap.html to get this connectivity working.

Lumira 2.0 Discovery can successfully leverage your HANA OLAP connections (managed connections in BI platform). This connectivity is over HTTP protocol and we recommend that you have it configured for secure communication i.e. HTTPS.

Step by step how to create a local SAP HANA connection with Analysis for Office 2.x

Create HANA local connection to an SAP HANA server with Analysis for Office 2.x version it easier and simple to configure. A local SAP HANA connection is created in the Select Data Source dialog.

With right click on the “select data source” you will be able to create the connection as you can see on the below images. Before create the connection you need a specific configuration that you can see below:

How to Subscribe to SAP Product Support “SAP HANA” WhatsApp Broadcast List

The new SAP Product Support “SAP HANA” WhatsApp Broadcast List is now available for SAP customers.  SAP customers can get the latest and most relevant SAP HANA updates.

Here are the instructions to subscribe to the list:

1. From your mobile device, click here to access to the Product Support “SAP HANA” broadcast list subscribe link. Make sure to have WhatsApp downloaded to your device.

2. After clicking on the subscribe URL, you will see below widget. Click on the WhatsApp box in the widget as shown here.

SAP HANA EXPRESS XSA Application Part 3

We will continue building our XSA application. To recap, we have created an HDI module and Node.js module. Please refer the below links for the same.

Part 1 : HANA XSA MTA project and HDI Module

Part 2 : Node.js Module

Right click on the project name and create new SAP Fiori Master Detail Module. Follow the wizard steps and provide the required information.  ODATA metadata will be of xsodata service from Node.js module.

XSA Python Buildpack Generator

The following is to provide an example of an XS Advanced Buildpack in order to support an upcoming TechEd 2017 lecture :

HDB100 – SAP HANA Extended Application Services and BYOL (Bring Your Own Language)

Normally, this would be provided via a git repo(and may yet be), but for now I’m providing it as a bash script.  Open a new file called create_my_python_buildpack, edit it, paste the following script into it, chmod 755 it, and then run it with the name of a directory the will be created containing your python buildpack.

 ./create_my_python_buildpack my_python_buildpack

SAP HANA Cloud Smart Data Integration for Real World Implementation Scenario

Motivation

Due to the intense promotion of SAP HANA (Cloud) Platform Smart Data Integration, I see that the easy integration of multiple sources and data utilization in the cloud has been growing in the market and therefore is sufficient justification to go for this tendency more and more.

Connecting Insights for ArcGIS to HANA

Insights can reference data in databases, in ArcGIS (your content, your organization’s content, Esri supplied demographics and so forth), and in spreadsheets.  The connectivity from Insights to HANA incorporates specific optimizations to maximize performance.  This means Insights can, with ease, fetch and manipulate large data sets returned from HANA.

SAP HANA EXPRESS XSA Application Part 2

In this part, we will continue developing our XSA application with Node.js module for business logic.

HANA XSA MTA project and HDI Module

1. Right click on the MTA project name and create Node.js module New->Node.js Module. Complete the steps in the wizard.

SAP HANA EXPRESS XSA Application Part 1

SAP HANA EXPRESS 2.0 provides us with SAP WEB IDE for HANA , enabling us to develop XS Advanced application supporting Node.js as well as JAVA framework. With this series of blog, I will share my first XSA application having database module for database artifact, Node.js module for XSODATA services i.e. business logic as well as user interface module based on SAP FIORI Master detail template.

Remediation for HANA Migration

Before migrating to HANA platform, the custom developments in SAP need to be remediated for HANA compatibility as explained in SAP Note 1912445.

Steps to be followed:

1. Identify the code where modifications are required.

 Execute SCI for custom developments with check variants as ‘FUNCTIONAL_DB’ and ‘FUNCTIONAL_DB_ADDITION’.

SAP HANA ABAP: SQLScript: Functions Part-1

The Goal of AMDP implementation is always to remove any additional logic required at the abap layer i.e. avoid loops, further joins, formatting or data conversions. To achieve this, we can leverage HANA SQL functions to ensure the that the data being returned from AMDP is complete and needs zero or a light touch while passing to the ABAP Layer.

Using the below explained functions we as a HANA developer can make our lives easier.

New SAP Help Portal Goes Live: What it Means for SAP HANA Dynamic Tiering Users

Getting to the Content

To find the dynamic tiering documentation, just search for “dynamic tiering” or “SAP HANA dynamic tiering” from the homepage.

Text join using pa0000 table in hana

I am sharing you concept called text join in HANA, which we mainly use to extract descriptive data from a table or language specific data from a table.

Text Join is used in order to get language-specific data.

Text Join is used to fetch the description based on user’s session language. Once we implement the text join in SAP HANA, it automatically find out user’s language and give description in that language.

Port Forwarding SAP HXE instance (VM) to allow connection from SAP BO 4.2 on the Cloud

In this post I will show you how I succeeded connecting SAP BO Platform 4.2 on the Cloud with my local SAP HXE instance (VM) for educational purposes only.

Scenario:

In my case, I do not have any of the SAP BI Client Tools, such as SAP BO IDT, SAP BO Webi Rich client, SAP Design Studio, and so forth installed on my devices. Reason is because I do not have authorization to download any software from SAP Download Center (which makes sense). So, my only gateway is the SAP BI Launchpad.

New Hana backup software

Hello, I would like to present a new backup software that we N’Ware Technologies have been developing to support our customer running on Hana.

We made this backup software because existing backup software were missing basic functionality or were complex to use.

linux Bash scripts/windows dos scripts to automate backups are complex to the normal user to manage. It requires specialized knowledge on how to use the command line, sometimes on linux that user might not know, and offer no other functionality than the basic 1 backup per day.

Calling HANA Stored Procedure from Abap class and scheduling it through Process chain (using AMDP – Abap managed database procedure)

This blog will explain below –

1. Creation of Repository Stored Procedure
2. Calling Stored Procedure through Abap class
3. Calling Abap class in Abap program and scheduling through process chain

The environment here is BW on HANA. The data modelling was done in SAP HANA view and there was a need to read the output of the view and persist it in the HANA table. Stored Procedure was written to read the data from HANA view and insert the data into HANA table.

How Classify The Classes based on Percentage in SAP HANA

Degree classification has a long history in our universities. It is widely accepted by students, parents and employers as the measure of academic achievement.

In this blog I am classifying the Student classes based on there percentage. If Student get above 60 percentage then they will get “FIRST CLASS” or If Student get between 60 to 50 percentage then they will get “SECOND CLASS” or If Student get below 50 percentage they will get “THIRD CLASS”.

How To Find Average In Calculated Column Using Calculation View In SAP HANA

Average : The sum of all of the numbers in a list divided by the number of items in that list.

In my calculation view I am taking student four subject marks and finding the average to that marks using Calculated Column.

Calculated Column : It is an additional column which can be created by us, the results of which are calculated at run time based on the existing column and using either functions, input parameters and constants.

Providing OpenSSL certificates for domains defined in HANA XSA

To start with, I create a server certificate for my HANA XSA system as usual:

NVM – HANA game changer?

The topic non-volatile memory (NVM) was hot as hell. A lot of people defined it as a game changer in the context of HANA.

Core Data Services [CDS] in SAP S/4 HANA

A data model represents framework of what relationships are in a database. Data models are the foundation of software development. They provide a standardized method for defining and formatting database contents consistently across systems, enabling different applications to share the same data.
Professional data modeling tools provide a way to generate SQL from a modeled ER diagram although some developers often prefer writing SQL directly. Below is a look of a data model.
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How To Calculate Student Average Marks in SAP HANA Studio Using Calculation View

Scenario : In This Scenario I am going Explaining about Calculating Student Average Marks using Calculated Column in Calculation View.

Calculation Views are used to combine other Analytic, Attribute and other Calculation views and base column tables. These are used to perform complex calculations, which are not possible with other type of Views.

Hana DR – Replication of INI parameters

Before Hana SPS12 we always have to manually setup the INI parameters on the secondary site after a change in the primary. It is not a tough thing to do nevertheless SPS12 introduced a feature to get a synchronization between the systems in a DR scenario also for INI parameter changes. One more step in the Hana synchronization and in my opinion it’s welcome.

I’ll not go into the replication configuration steps just describe my findings on the INI replication subject. Hope you get it useful.

S/4 HANA Trial Balance CDS View

We were very excited when we discovered the standard SAP delivered CDS C_TRIALBALANCEQ0001 for displaying the Trial Balance as the calculation of opening and closing balances can be tricky and the Universal Journal ACDOCA table was new to us, as was S/4 HANA.

During our testing using the embedded BW we realised that the opening and closing balances it was returning was incorrect and upon consultation with SAP they confirmed that additional new Fiscal configuration is required on an S/4 HANA environment.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 00 What’s New: High Availability

Introduction

we will be posting new videos to the SAP HANA Academy to show new features and functionality introduced with SAP HANA 2.0 Support Package Stack (SPS) 00.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS01 : What’s New for SAP HANA License Implemetation

Introduction: SAP HANA License keys are installed for uninterrupted usage of HANA database. You can install or delete HANA License keys using HANA studio, SAP HANA HDBSQL command line tool and HANA SQL Query Editor.

Types of License keys

SAP HANA system supports two types of License keys −

• Temporary License Key − Temporary License keys are automatically installed when you install the HANA database. These keys are valid only for 90 days and you should request permanent license keys from SAP market place before expiry of this 90 days period after installation.

SAP HANA Security: Granting Object Privileges with Repository Roles

This blog explains how to use the SAP HANA Web-Based Development Workbench to grant object privileges with repository roles in SAP HANA.

SAP HANA Web-Based Development Workbench

The SAP HANA Web-Based Development Workbench editor, hosted within the XS engine, provides an interface that you can use to build and test development artifacts. From a security perspective, we can use this interface to create and manage repository-based roles. This interface offers all the advantages of repository-based roles without the need to define those roles using scripts. The interface is not exclusive, meaning that you can edit repository-based roles created using scripts with the GUI interface, and you can edit a repository-based role’s scripts, those created using a GUI, in SAP HANA Studio. This flexibility allows the security administrator to manage the repository role using either interface.

Consuming SAP HANA Express Edition information models in Microsoft Power BI using live connection

Initially I created my account at https://powerbi.microsoft.com. I also subscribed for the Microsoft Power BI YouTube channel.

so, I decided to play around connecting Power BI with my SAP HXE instance. Generally speaking there are two ways of connecting and consuming SAP HANA information models in Power BI: Import and DirectQuery. For this post, I will be showing my SAP HANA live data connection with Power BI (DirectQuery).

HANA Deep Insert

I have been very impressed with HANA and the ease in which you can expose an OData service for your entities and views. Since starting work on the platform I have found the need to store my entities using a deep insert. I thought surely this was possible, but like many I have been disappointed to find that this is not supported.

Currently the solution to this problem is to place the creates into a batch in the front end. My main issue with this is the parent Id is not returned to me to place into the child objects. I am then forced to place the child create in the success handler of the parent object create, losing the transaction functionality.

SAP HANA passing value from one input parameter to other for filtering table

I am going to explain how to pass value from one input parameter to other parameter and filter the underlying table without any process change in the view.

CV_xxx_BASE View before changes

Configuration of input parameter in current view was as under

Parameter Type : Direct

Semantic Type : Date

Data Type : Date

SAP HANA Multitenant Database Containers (MDC) Features Chart

Starting from HANA 2.0 SPS01, Multitenant Database Containers (MDC) will be the standard and only operational mode for SAP HANA systems, and definitely one of the significant changes that will have greater influence, affect directly or indirectly on customers’ systems that are currently running on single container but plan to update to HANA 2.0 SPS01+ and above anytime soon or in near future.

Want to know the differences and the developed of MDC with more supported features and less limitations compare to years ago when it first introduced on HANA 1.0 SPS09+ ?

Avoiding HANA Enterprise Cloud Headaches!

A source told me that one of the largest SAP customers in the (ANZ) region is moving from HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) back to an on-premise infrastructure model. Well, this was not surprising for me as I already knew some customers in Europe also moved from HEC to on-premise or other cloud offerings, due to unexpected and unforeseen issues with the HEC model.

I am aware that the majority of the businesses still can’t simply justify the business case for HEC, and it is disappointing to see that some existing customers don’t get the expected business benefits from this model.

Restore SingleDB on 122.08 to Multi Tenant DB on HANA 2.0 SPS01

Just tested recover a single Database to Multi Tenant Database without the need to convert them to MDC beforehand with below scenario and thought it is a good idea to share.

This enhancement only work on target >= HANA 2.0 SPS01 and is particularly useful where it keeps your source/ productive database intact and allows you to to perform a series of testing before converting them to MDC, especially if you plan to upgrade to HANA 2.0 SPS01 since MDC would be the standard and only operation mode.

The AWS IoT Button and SAP HANA express edition

I’m a sucker for new toys and tech and when I can take something new and within a short period of playing around actually connect it to SAP I’m on top of the world.

HANA Backup and Recovery: Multi-streaming Data Backups with Third-Party Backup Tools

SAP HANA uses one channel for data backups, by default. With the introduction of SAP HANA SP11 we have new functionality available to make it possible to considerably speed up the backup time by distributing backup data in parallel to multiple devices by using third party back-up tools.

When multiple channels are used, SAP HANA distributes the data equally across the available channels. All the parts of a multi-streamed backup are approximately the same.

SAP HANA High Availability and Disaster Recovery Series

My purpose is to deep-dive into the entire SAP HANA high availability (HA), fault recovery (FR) and disaster recovery (DR) concept including the high-level overview of ALL available HA, FR and DR options, different configuration and setup methods and key benefits and trade-offs of each technology. I aim to provide deeper, clear and broader information in SAP HANA HA and DR technologies unlike the majority of confusing and contradictory information available on the internet. At the end of the day, you will be able to compare all available DR, FR and HA options, learn how to ensure your system’s operational continuity and decide the most suitable approach for your own data center readiness scenario to meet the business requirements.

Migration of SAP Systems to SAP HANA

Introduction

This document provides a starting point for the planning of your migration procedure of SAP systems to SAP HANA in an on-premise landscape. Beginning with an overview of available migration path options, we provide a general recommendation and further aspects and guidance how to identify the best procedure for your requirements. Take these aspects into the discussion with your cross-functional teams and use them as basis for an individual assessment based on the boundary conditions you are facing.

Migrating the SHINE Purchase Order Worklist Application from SAP HANA XS Classic to SAP HANA XS Advanced.

Prerequisites

To perform a migration you need to be aware of the files that are not supported by the migration assistant und migrate them manually in advance. How to do this manual step, is described in the official documentation.

Prepare the XS classic source system.

A short overview of the SAP HANA Performance Management Tools in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS00

SAP HANA capture and replay

Testing application workload can be a huge effort for users, developers and consultants alike. Also, things do not get easier on a large scale, especially for moving from one revision or SPS of SAP HANA to another.

Initially released with SAP HANA1 SPS12, SAP HANA capture and replay offers semi-automated support for integrated testing in the context of SAP HANA., the goal being to simplify the manual effort needed for creating tests and performing a more accurate replays than what is possible with other approaches.

Single sign on with Spring Security SAML and SAP HANA

SAP HANA provides users the ability to authenticate using a valid, trusted SAML assertion token. Recently, I was asked to demonstrate this ability to authenticate with a trusted SAML token from a Spring Security web application. So, I laid out a scenario as shown in the figure below.

Enterprise Readiness with SAP HANA – Storage & System Replication between data centers

Having covered the Build phase in our last blog on system replication within the data center, we will now cover in this blog the phase on running the data center. The run phase focuses on helping IT managers to operate and execute the data center readiness stages of disaster recovery, monitoring and administration, as well as security and auditing. In this blog, we will focus specifically on the storage and system replication technologies currently available for the IT manager.

Storage & System Replication

For large enterprises running multiple data centers, SAP HANA has two disaster recovery features: storage replication and system replication. These are based on the current offerings SAP HANA already has at the node level, which we covered in the previous blog. The table below provides a brief overview between the two offerings and their implications.

Enterprise Readiness with SAP HANA – Host Auto-failover, System Replication, Storage Replication

Continuing on from the earlier blog on Backup & Recovery that we covered last year, we will focus on the Building phase for data centers as we continue this topic in 2017. This segment will focus on what happens inside the data center, and specificically the high availability capabilities and options by SAP HANA, which can be deployed according to the IT managers’ landscape requirements. Of particular focus would be the System Replication feature, which will be explained in detail.

Choosing the right HANA Database Architecture

I have realized that especially after the recent release of “more advanced” S/4 HANA products, the SAP community is now more focused on cloud, on premise or hybrid deployment options and it seems to me that the actual underlying SAP HANA database architecture is usually overlooked even though it is the core of the entire implementation. In case you end up with wrong HANA database architecture, it would be really hard to have a proper high-availability and disaster recovery setup in your landscape no matter where you deployed it – cloud or on premise. And remember, when it comes to architecting SAP HANA, there are 3 key elements must be considered carefully; scalability, effectiveness and fault tolerance. In this article, I aim to provide detailed information regarding the current available SAP HANA database architecture and deployment options.

Fiori Launchpad in SAP HANA 2.0 SP01

SAP Fiori launchpad is the strategic single point of entry for SAP business applications and analytics. It offers a role-based, personalized and real-time access for end users.

If you are not familiar with Fiori UX and Fiori Launchpad you can find more information here.

How to send data from Apache NIFI to HANA

NIFI is a great apache web based tool, for routing and transformation of data. Kind of an ETL tool. In my scenario, I am trying to fetch tweets from the Tweeter API, and after that, I wanted to save them to hadoop, but also, filter them and save them to HANA for doing Sentiment Analysis

My first idea was to save them to hadoop, and then fetch them to HANA, but after discovering NIFI, it was obvious that the best solution was to fetch the tweet, then format the json file, and then insert it on HANA.

Why nifi? the answer is simple, it is very intuitive and simple to use. Also very simple to install, and it is already integrated with twitter, hadoop, and JDBC. So it was the obvious choose for my idea.-

New in SAP HANA, express edition: Streaming Analytics

SAP HANA smart data streaming (SDS) is HANA’s high speed real-time streaming analytics engine.  It lets you easily build and deploy streaming data models (a.k.a. projects) that process and analyze incoming messages as fast as they arrive, allowing you to react in real-time to what’s going on. Use it to generate alerts or initiate an immediate response. With the Internet of Things (IoT), common uses include analyzing incoming sensor data from smart devices – particularly when there is a need to react in real-time to a new opportunity – or in anticipation of a problem.

Using Data Management Strategies to Simplify the Move to S/4HANA

When it comes to considering the move to S/4HANA, many companies are concerned by the short-term pain points that accompany the transition – even though the future benefits are so clear. While SAP provides many tools and support to make the transition as seamless as possible, many companies prefer to delay the transition and wait and see what the future holds. But “wait and see” is not a very viable business strategy.

Organizations must look for ways to simplify the move to S/4HANA and increase the ROI. The same strategies are applicable when migrating BW and/or Business Suite systems from any legacy database to SAP HANA.

Unpivot Data In HANA Using a Graphical Calculation View

UNPIVOT data is a common requirement especially when we try to covert MS SQL query into SAP HANA data model. I ran into one such requirement, we had ETL data from MS SQL server to SAP HANA Enterprise and while converting one MS SQL model into HANA model I came across a Select query in MS SQL server where they were using UNPIVOT in Select statement.

I am using a simple example to explain how we can UNPIVOT data in HANA using Graphical Calculation View.

What is really changing with SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01?

This new release includes enhancements for database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

This release also includes another important change which will have a greater influence on the landscape configuration and sizing of SAP HANA and will definitely encourage people to become more creative and flexible with the technical architecture.

Starting with SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01, multitenant database containers (MDC) will be the only operational mode for SAP HANA systems. This means that if you upgrade to SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01, you will no longer be able to run a single-container HANA system.

SAP HANA Express: Exposing Predictive Analytics through oData

The prerequisites for your SAP HANA instance:

• A tenant DB, which you can create with the following command.

CREATE DATABASE DB1 SYSTEM USER PASSWORD Initial1;

alter system start database DB1;

• While we are abiding by better practices, it’s a good idea to create a Developer user instead of using the SYSTEM user for development.
• A user with the proper permissions to execute the PAL functions and DROP/CREATE ANY in a schema (different from the AFL schema, please). The following is a sample list of roles taking into account what this blog needs, but you need to restrict permissions depending on your needs (you will also need CATALOG READ and the proper package privileges):

LEARN WITH US : S/4HANA Analytics!!

What it is?

S/4 HANA stands for Simple 4th Generation Business suite solutions from SAP which will run on SAP HANA. SAP HANA is one of the preferred product among the companies seeking for an optimized enterprise solution because the product has come a long way from its previous predecessors which had its transaction processing and analytical processing in different platforms, that meant more time on data output and decision making.

It is very well known as The Next Generation Business Suite and it is greatest innovation since R3 and ERP from the SAP world. It unites the software and people to build businesses to run on real-time, networked and in simple way. It has got built-in analytics for hybrid transactional and analytical applications.

S/4HANA OP FIORI Apps: How to configure FIORI Apps?

At times, users come across many issues like system alias, services activation, server errors while testing Fiori apps in S/4HANA OP landscape. The issues are generally due to incomplete configuration.

Based on my learning, I am listing down the steps one can follow to setup Fiori apps in S/4HANA OP Landscape.

As OData services exists in gateway system, all the settings listed below are applicable to Gateway system.

Multi-container database mode is the new default

Multi-tenancy features, also known as “multiple database containers” or MDC have been available in SAP HANA for several years already. With the new SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01 release, all systems now run in multi-container database mode. All new systems are installed in multi-container database mode, and existing single-container systems are converted during the upgrade to SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01.

Advantages of multi-container database mode

Systems running in multi-container database mode can very easily be extended by adding new tenant databases. Being able to run and manage multiple tenant databases in one system helps you to lower capital expenditure, simplify database management, or for example build multi-tenant cloud applications.

SAP PDMS 1.0 FP02 On-premise edition 1.0 (Configuration – Pt.2)

In the first part of my documentation (pt.1), I have explained and showed in detail how to proceed  with the mandatory landscape and component setup of the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution.
In this second part (pt.2) I will explain and show how to configure the applications regarding:

• Thing Model Service
• Data Science Service
• Insight Provider (Map, Asset Explorer, Components, Key Figures)

SAP PDMS 1.0 FP02 On-premise edition 1.0 (Installation – Pt.1)

SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service, on-premise edition supports customers with a unified solution for operators looking to identify issues in large fleets of machines as well as to improve after-sales services and optimize service planning for individual machines.

The following image gives you an overview of what business users see when they work with the asset health control center, to get further detailed information about an asset health status, business users can go to the asset health fact sheet: