‘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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Did you know you can add Spatial Reference Systems to HANA?

By default, HANA has 4 preconfigured Spatial Reference Systems (SRS).  Two of the preconfigured ones most used are 4326 (WGS 84 Spheroidal) and 1000004326 (WGS 84 Planar). However, there are over 3000 other spatial reference systems and many of our customers utilize some of them.  So how do you add additional ones?

Input parameter based on procedure of type Date

Use case: The user is asked to enter a date. If nothing is specified then it should be default to first day of the current month else user specified value should be used to filter the data, using Graphical calculation view.

If you are thinking to do by using Input parameter with “Derived from Procedure/Scalar function”
then you are almost there with just 2 hurdles to cross.

For this demonstration I’m using the below table structure for which the field
DOJ is of type DATE on which the input parameter will be used.

EHP upgrade and HANA migration. Lessons learnt

The system was based on SAP EHP Release 7.01 running on an Oracle database that had over 8.7 Terabytes. Additionally, the pre-existing landscape and the target one are hosted on premises, under virtual servers on vSphere 6.0. Software  wise, our customer system is based on Vehicle Management System (IS-A-VMS), although with a significant amount of customizations and custom code.

The original motivation to initiate this project followed an analysis of the usage of the system, and based on our predictions of additional data volume, additional markets, etc. it was quite clear that we needed to take some measures to keep the response times within reasonable limits. Furthermore, it was quite obvious that HANA was the future for SAP based systems, so at some point we would have had to contemplate a migration.

Dynamic filter / User Exit Variable for HANA Views

Requirement : Based on user input or current month , we want to restrict data in our view.  Common requirement is to show last 12/13 months data dynamically. In general , we want to go 'n' number of months back from current month or whatever month user would select.

Solution :  From  SPS09 , HANA allows Input Parameter of type   "Derived From Procedure /Scalar Function" - and I would use this to meet this requirement. Good thing about this solution is , we can restrict the data at the first projection node and avoid bringing unnecessary data to upper nodes.  We shall write a procedure which would take month input from user ( or current month if nothing supplied)  and return  "to" and "from" month.

Upgrade your HANA, express edition to HANA 2

1. Temporarily increase memory to 23.9 GB
2. Create temporary user
3. Uninstall HANA 1
4. Install HANA 2
5. Install AFL

In order to allow for the upgrade to HANA 2, I have to temporarily increase the memory of my virtual machine to 23.9 GB as before:

Securing SuccessFactors Extensions on SAP HANA Cloud Platform

Overview

SAP HANA Cloud Platform, extension package for SuccessFactors allows you to extend your SuccessFactors scope with applications running on the platform. The extension package makes it quick and easy for companies to adapt and integrate SuccessFactors cloud applications to their existing business processes, thus helping them maintain competitive advantage, engage their workforce and improve their bottom line.

Upgrade your HANA, express edition

In my previous blog Secure your HANA, express edition I described how to register your HANA, express edition system with SUSE to receive critical security updates.

In this blog I will leverage this work to describe how to upgrade your HANA, express edition to the latest patch level. However, please be aware, that

1. This increases the memory required from 7 GB to 9 GB for the Server only option.
2. Also, temporarily, 24 GB of available RAM are needed for the upgrade.

To start with, I update the preinstalled VMware Tools to mount shared folders with the upgrade software packages.

Secure your HANA, express edition

As soon as I heard of the HANA, express edition I got it installed on my laptop. The Server only option requires 7 GB of available RAM, the Server + applications 12 GB.

Importing the images into VMware Player 7.1.4 went like a charm. However, the underlying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications has received security updates since the HANA, express edition images had been build.

Therefore, the first step for me after logging into the hxehost system and changing the hxeadm password was to start the SLES setup tool YaST to add a SUSE subscription to the installation:

How to analyze and retain Unused Memory from the HANA/BODS/BW servers

This document is based on one of the major issue on memory bottleneck we are facing in our HANA landscape where we have BODS, BW and HANA DB all running on the same server. The Capacity of the server is quite high with memory of around 512GB and is distributed among different servers. To get the detail on which user is using how much RAM please run the following script:

#!/bin/sh
LDIFS=$IFS
IFS=$'\n'
tempsum=0
totalmem=0
for m in `ps -eo user,rss --sort user | sed -e 's/  */ /g' | awk -F'[ ]' {'print $0'}`; do

The Parent Child hierarchy in HANA

There are two types of hierarchies supported in HANA:

• Parent-Child hierarchy
• Level hierarchy

In this document, I would like to take the readers through the Parent child hierarchy: to create a very simple Parent Child hierarchy and to use it in a reporting tool that supports multidimensional reporting, like A-Office.

SAP HANA DB Installation Steps (Part 2)

Steps to follow:

1) Download the SAP HANA media file  from  service market place
2) Place the media file into the some safe directory location
3) Loginto OS level with” root user” or SIDadm
4) Go the directories which you the HANA media file cd <installation medium>/DATA_UNITS/HDB_LCM_LINUX_X86_64
5) Start the SAP HANA platform lifecycle management tool:
6) Find the file and execute “./hdblcm --compontent_root=/DVD"

SAP HANA Installation Steps (Part 1)

Pre-requites:

1) Pre-study and go through the SAP Notes & recommendations
2) Prepare for Hardware requirements
3) Prepare for OS environment like UNIX, SUSE Linux, windows etc...
4) Install Java 1.6 or higher level
5) Install GUI Component
6) Download the HANA database software from service market place