How to Install the Automated Predictive Library in SAP HANA

Having recently installed the the new Automated Predictive Library (APL), the former KXEN Infinite Insight Libraries inside HANA, I wanted to share my experience.

The benefit the APL brings is that we can now utilise the KXEN libraries directly in-memory within the HANA Platform so the data never needs to leave HANA.  These libraries are a core part of Predictive Analytics 2.0 and are found in both the Automated and Expert perspectives within this.  As the name suggests when using the APL we have attempted to automate as much of the predictive process as possible.

Introducing the SAP Automated Predictive Library

You may have already heard about the recent release of SAP Predictive Analytics 2.0, but may not be aware that this also includes the SAP Automated Predictive Library (APL) for SAP HANA.

The APL is effectively the SAP InfiniteInsight (formerly KXEN) predictive logic optimized and adapted to execute inside the SAP HANA database itself for maximum performance - just like the SAP HANA Predictive Analysis Library (PAL) and Business Function Library (BFL).

Obviously when you already have data in SAP HANA it makes sense to perform heavy-duty processing such as data mining as close as possible to where the data resides - and this is exactly what the APL provides.

By way of comparison, the PAL provides a suite of predictive algorithms that you can call at will - as long as you know which algorithm you need, whereas the APL focuses on automation of the predictive process and uses it's own in built intelligence to identify the most appropriate algorithm for a given scenario. So the two are very much complementary.