SAP HANA: Using SAX Parser for Loading XML response from outbound HTTP into table

In this blog , I would like to share my thoughts around using XS destinations for internet connectivity and capturing the XML response and loading the same into HANA with the help of SAX XML Parser.

Scenario :

We shall take the familiar Google Maps API and let us see how can we connect from SAP HANA and capture the XML response. We would need to define xshttpdest for outbound connectivity.

SAP HANA: Exploring data using SAP Visual Intelligence

SAP Visual Intelligence is SAP’s latest innovation in the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer solution family. It is a desktop-based visualization and data manipulation solution that allows business users to acquire data from a variety of corporate and personal data sources and manipulate without any scripting.
They can then analyze this data, with beautiful visualizations, quickly discovering unique insight that can be easily shared, shaping the business faster than ever before. -- As mentioned by SAP

Let us see what SAP says that we can do with SAP HANA using SAP Visual Intelligence:

How to use HDBAdmin to analyze performance traces in SAP HANA

Most of the time, the Plan Visualizer is sufficiently powerful to understand what is going on inside of SAP HANA when you run a query. However, sometimes you need to get to a lower level of detail to understand exactly what is going on in the calculation engine.

It is then possible to use HANA Studio to record performance traces, and analyze them with HDBAdmin. This is a fairly advanced topic, so beware!

First, let's pick a query which runs slowly. This query takes 12 seconds, which is longer than I'd like. Admittedly, it's a tough query, grouping 1.4bn transactions and counting over 2m distinct customers.

What’s new in SAP HANA SPS12 – SAP HANA Graph Engine

What’s new in SAP HANA SPS12 – SAP HANA Graph Engine

SAP HANA Graph is an integrated part of SAP HANA core functionality. It expands (the functions of) relational database management systems, with native support for graph processing, and allows executing typical graph operations on all data stored in a SAP HANA system; which is automatically optimizes execution plans to execute highly performant queries, and built-in graph algorithms based on flexible schema property graph data model, to traverse on relationships without the need to predefined modeling and complex JOIN statements.

Data based on Conditions in a table

All the user conditions are available in the Table: USER_CONDITIONS and these conditions will be applied on the Table: EMPLOYEE. To keep it simple, let us consider two tables with sample data as shown below:

SAP HANA Information Composer V 1.0 - External Data Upload

Introduction.
This document will walk you through the process of creation of tables and uploading data into HANA database without writing single SQL statement. This tool helps us to create physical table in HANA database in accordance to the sample data set we provide. It removes all the technicalities of modeling and provides an easy to use simple modeling environment with limited functionalities. Hence it bridges the gap between backend system and business users.
It allows Business users to gather their own data, upload it, and combine/compare it with corporate sources. They need not to understand various modeling technicalities, the tool itself is intelligent enough to suggest various joins/Unions etc once it analyses the data.
Hence SAP HANA (SP3) delivers the first version of “Self service data warehousing” solution.

Creating HANA DB based SAP Netweaver Gateway Service

SAP has provided with GW SP04 a basic integration framework for creating an OData service based on the HANA DB. With this framework you can easily expose the HANA analytical models via the REST based Open Data (OData) format.

 I was very enthusiastic to try this one out and I was able to create such a service in very less time. And you don’t have to be an ABAP expert to build such a service.
I have outlined the steps to create such a service referring to the help document at
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_gateway20sp04/helpdata/en/33/0e14f0590b48318ea38b3a06a92d17/content.htm and some from trial and error.
There are also some limitations currently on the integration which are also documented above. I will create a simple service on an attribute view which will fetch the data in the service.

1. The First step you need logon to the HANA Client and create a View (Attribute/Analytic/Calculation). Make a note of the catalogue name and the view name.
2. Check your SAP Netweaver Gateway system or the Backend system wherever you are trying to create the service has the add-on component Installed.

Move HANA data and log files to different mount point

I decided to write this because I ran into a space problem while trying to upgrade a HANA test system. Of course, it isn’t a certified appliance, but I had to move the data and log files to another mount point to free up enough space to complete the upgrade.

Moving data files to a different mount point is a common procedure for many databases, but typically isn’t an issue with HANA’s appliance model. HANA has a very specific hardware configuration with the persistent mount point being 4 times RAM. The introduction of the Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) may warrant this process a little more often. I’ve outlined the steps below to move the $(DIR_GLOBAL)/hdb/data and $(DIR_GLOBAL)/hdb/log directories to a different location.

Parallelization options with the SAP HANA and R-Integration

Why is parallelization relevant?

The R-Integration with SAP HANA aims at leveraging R’s rich set of powerful statistical, data mining capabilities, as well as its fast, high-level and built-in convenience operations for data manipulation (eg. Matrix multiplication, data sub setting etc.) in the context of a SAP HANA-based application. To benefit from the power of R, the R-integration framework requires a setup with two separate hosts for SAP HANA and the R/Rserve environment. A brief summary of how R processing from a SAP HANA application works is described in the following:

• SAP HANA triggers the creation of a dedicated R-process on the R-host machine, then
• R-code plus data (accessible from SAP HANA) are transferred via TCP/IP to the spawned R-process.
• Some computational tasks take place within the R-process, and
• the results are sent back from R to SAP HANA for consumption and further processing.

A first attempt at using HANA Cloud Integration to integrate Workday and Salesforce

Starting to do some research on this idea, I ran across an article about a recent agreement between Workday and Salesforce:
Under a technical agreement and go-to-market strategy, Salesforce and Workday will do the following:

• Salesforce will standardize on Workday's applications.
• Workday will standardize on Salesforce's applications and platform.
• Workday will integrate Salesforce with Workday's human capital management software, financials and big data analytics software.
• Salesforce will integrate Workday into Chatter and other applications. [SOURCE]

Then, I had an even more amusing thought – “What about a Workday – Salesforce integration”.

Since the Eclipse-based software for HCI is already available, I decided to see how far I could get with my nefarious – no - heretical plan.

SAP HANA: Handling Dynamic Select Column List and Multiple values in input parameter

In this document we will be discussing on how to handle multiple values passed in to filter condition using “REPLACE” Function in procedure and also Dynamic SQL using Execute Immediate.

Note: We followed this approach since our reporting tool is HTML5 web dashboards and we cannot consume Variables with "Multiple Values" for the same.

A) Problem Description:

--> How to handle multiple values in filter condition ?

Example:

If we have “Region” as a filtering criterion and we have 3 Regions namely: AMR, APAC and EMEA and the user want the flexibility to select the list of regions for which he wants to analyze the data.

SAP HANA: importing and exporting Landscapes in HANA STUDIO

In this document I would like to explain about, “export” and “import” of system “landscapes”.
In our project, we have different architectures for landscapes like” quality”, ”development”, ”production”. So this can be done by adding “multiple hana systems” which connects to different server instances.
1. This feature helps to monitor the systems from single hana studio interface. In this example you can see below, that I have 2 systems named DCC and DCD. Both are connecting to 2 different server instances. Now let us see how do we “export” and “import” our landscapes. In case if you want to use a new HANA studio installed and you want to get your existing landscapes into your newly installed “studio” you can use this feature.
As shown above, you can see 2 systems named DCC and DCD.

Now go to “quick launch” and select “export” and choose “landscapes” as shown below:

SAP HANA: Using Hierarchies

In SAP HANA, we have a choice of creating 2 types of hierarchies:

1. Level Hierarchy
2. Parent Child Hierarchy 

Level Hierarchy:
     Each level represents a position in the hierarchy. For example, a time dimension might have a hierarchy that represents data at the month, quarter, and year levels.Each level above the base (or most detailed) level contains aggregate values for the levels below it. The members at different levels have a one-to-many parent-child relation. For example, Q1-05 and Q2-05 are the children of 2005, thus 2005 is the parent of Q1-05 and Q2-05.
Hierarchies and levels have a many-to-many relationship. A hierarchy typically contains several levels, and a single level can be included in more than one hierarchy.

In our example, let us take “Level Hierarchy”.

Exception aggregation modeling with Graphical Calc view

The business scenario is quite common in the BI reporting. Consider a KPI, required to be calculated at a low level of granularity, but the reporting is required at the higher level of granularity. With the default aggregation behavior of the calc view, the constituents of the Calculated KPI might also be aggregated at the reporting granularity level, resulting in incorrect value for the Calculated KPI.

To elaborate more on this, consider the following data model for the Sales Transaction. The transaction data is captured for Product Sold on a given date in a store. The table structure can be defined as follows:

( STORE_ID    nvarchar(10),  --- Store Id
  PROD_ID    nvarchar(10),  --- Product Id
  PROD_CAT    nvarchar(10),  --- Product Category
  PROD_PRICE  decimal(10,2), --- Product Price
  SOLD_QTY    integer,      --- Product Quantity Sold in a Sales transaction
  TRANS_DATE  nvarchar(8),  --- Sales Transaction Date
  STORE_REG  nvarchar(10)  --- Region in which the Store is located
);

The business rule could be:
The product price may vary each day, hence the Net Sales need to be calculated for the Product Price on the transaction date and Quantity Sold on the day.

How to Plan for Disaster Recovery with SAP HANA

Abstract
As devices, systems, and networks become more complex, there are simply more things that can go wrong due either to man-made or natural disasters. See the options available with SAP HANA for disaster recovery that help organizations keep business running smoothly in such circumstances.

Key Concept
SAP HANA provides a single platform to extract and analyze massive amounts of structured and unstructured data in real time from multiple sources such as social media, blogs, online reviews, emails, and discussion forums. The analyzed information helps customer to answer specific questions, increase revenue, and make accurate and timely decisions. The analyzed information and the data that is accumulated over the years is the backbone for an organization. If something happens to the data due to natural or man-made disasters, business can come to a halt. Making use of the SAP HANA disaster recovery features can save companies from such an outcome.

Learning Objectives
By reading the article you will be able to:

• Understand the concept of disaster recovery
• Understand the disaster recovery options with SAP HANA

Nowadays most every company has its business continuity plan that helps during an unfortunate event such as flood or earthquake. A disaster recovery plan is part of business continuity plan focusing mainly on the restoration of IT infrastructure and operations after a crisis.

There are two important terms when it comes to a disaster recovery plan: recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO), as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Disaster recovery concepts

SAP HANA: Achieving Set operations using Joins

Now we can have multiple discussions. As we know that achieving with UNION is better than JOINS. But again it depends on the volumes of the data and the place at which you are applying it.

As per our experiences, we also know that if we can achieve with the help of Attribute /Analytic Views it is better than doing the same with Calculation View Graphical / SQL. In this document i have tried to achieve with Attribute views as much as possible and while doing this i came to know about the Full Outer Join option through graphical models is not possible anymore.

These are 7 questions on which Jody has discussed,

Here are our Tables:

Table 1:

Table 2: 

Steps to follow Disaster Recovery with SAP HANA

Abstract
As devices, systems, and networks become more complex, there are simply more things that can go wrong due either to man-made or natural disasters. See the options available with SAP HANA for disaster recovery that help organizations keep business running smoothly in such circumstances.

Key Concept
SAP HANA provides a single platform to extract and analyze massive amounts of structured and unstructured data in real time from multiple sources such as social media, blogs, online reviews, emails, and discussion forums. The analyzed information helps customer to answer specific questions, increase revenue, and make accurate and timely decisions. The analyzed information and the data that is accumulated over the years is the backbone for an organization. If something happens to the data due to natural or man-made disasters, business can come to a halt. Making use of the SAP HANA disaster recovery features can save companies from such an outcome.

Learning Objectives
By reading the article you will be able to:

• Understand the concept of disaster recovery
• Understand the disaster recovery options with SAP HANA

Nowadays most every company has its business continuity plan that helps during an unfortunate event such as flood or earthquake. A disaster recovery plan is part of business continuity plan focusing mainly on the restoration of IT infrastructure and operations after a crisis.

SAP HANA: What are packages in SAP HANA?

What is a Package?

This is a procedure for grouping together the related information objects in a structured way.

Types of Packages:

Use:

It groups all the information models and makes it easier to transport (import/export) the models which we have created in an efficient manner. Means we can "Package" our data models and easily import/export them to another HANA Studio instance.

The power of Smart Data Access (SDA) with SAP HANA SP08

Introduction

Smart Data Access (SDA) was first introduced with SAP HANA SP06 and it enables enterprise to dynamically access and report across heterogeneous sources like SAP HANA, Sybase IQ, Sybase ASE, Hadoop, SQL Server, Teradata, Oracle and SQL Server.

Please refer to the links below, for more details

SAP Unveils SAP HANA Service Pack 6 (SP6) for Big Data and Spatial Processing

Modelling capabilities on these remote virtual (SDA) tables were introduced with HANA SP07, however this was limited to SQL based calculation views. Graphical calculation views can also be created using the SDA tables, however in this scenario the Aggregation (read. GROUP BY) was not pushed down to the remote database.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2gB-XPbh9E7bk5va1JnVlNOdEE

SDA Features Enhancements with HANA SP08 (Rev 82)

Finally SAP HANA SP08 (rev 82) introduced the capability of Aggregation (GROUP BY) push down to the remote database in down in graphical calculations. That’s truly opens the possibility of building models on top of SDA virtual tables and hence building analytic solution.

Attribute View creation in SAP HANA(Using Single and Multiple Tables)

In this document, I am going to explain the steps involved in creating Attribute View in SAP HANA.
We can create Attributes Views....

1) Using single or Multiple Tables
2) Using existing attribute view to enhance your current one ( you want to show material description for each material number).

1) Using Single or Multiple Tables:
The below diagram shows the major steps involved in creating Attribute View.

The pre-requisites to create Attribute View are..

i) Tables should exist with data

ii) Package should exist.

In my earlier documents I have shown how to create tables and package.

• http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-25922
• http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-25996

Now we will discuss the steps involved in creating Attribute View.