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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

HANA Express Edition on an UBUNTU 16.04 LXC Container

I’m assuming you have a working Ubuntu 16.04 Server or Desktop installation, and you have the installation files by hand.
What we’ll do is:

• Install required packages, 
• create a network bridge, 
• do some LXC config stuff, 
• create a LXC container and 
• install HANA Express Edition in that container. 

What we’ll get is:

• A Hana Express Edition working in a Linux Contianer, 
• all advantages of an isolated Virtual Machine, 
• a much smaller VM memory footprint, 
• and near bare metal speed.

Five stars to SAP HANA Express Edition on Google Cloud Platform

Ever since I installed my SAP HANA, express edition (HXE), instances on Google Cloud Platform I have been using them as my main platforms for development and different experiments. My experience has been so good that I feel it has to be shared so others do not miss on it.

What I like about Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is that it makes it extremely easy to get my SAP HANA instances up and running when and how I want them.

The web SSH client and GCloud console stand out as a star feature. Two clicks and you are logged in to the operating system, ready to cast some commands using the web interface.

Data Encryption Comparison between HANA 1.0 and HANA 2.0

Recently, I was dealing with the challenge whether I should implement server-side data encryption (with focus on data and logs) on our SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 12 system or I should wait with the implementation until the upgrade to latest release of SAP HANA, which is currently HANA 2.0 SPS 00.

For this purpose, I was analyzing the question what is possible to implement in SAP HANA 1.0 and HANA 2.0, regarded from a data and log encryption perspective. As many others might be exploring this, I wanted to share my findings with you.

HALM Usage and Troubleshooting

What is HALM?

HALM stands for HANA Application Lifecycle Management, this image from the documentation explains the product lifecycle using HALM:

SAP HANA Tools-Modeler and Web IDE (New and Changed) – SAP HANA Platform 2.0 SP00

As of SAP HANA Platform 2.0 SP00, the following new features and changes are available in SAP Web IDE and integrated SAP HANA tools.

SAP Web IDE for SAP HANA is a browser-based integrated development environment (IDE) for the development of SAP HANA-based applications comprised of web-based or mobile UIs, business logic, and extensive SAP HANA data models. SAP Web IDE works in conjunction with the SAP HANA deployment infrastructure (HDI), the Application Lifecycle Management tools (ALM), the XS Advanced runtime platform, and various SAP HANA tools.

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?

Synonyms in HANA XS Advanced, Configuration, Templating, Service Replacement

In the previous post I showed the complete end-to-end scenario of using synonyms in XS Advanced. In this post I will show, how more flexibility can be achieved.

The flexibility options do not really depend on whether accessing a classical schema or a generated HDI Container. Everything that is different was explained in the previous post. I will therefore only use a classical schema OR an HDI container as target, not both. And I will focus on the things that are different with flexible synonym targets.

Synonyms in HANA XS Advanced, Accessing Objects in an External Schema

In the previous post I introduced synonyms in XS Advanced (XSA) and created a very simple synonym. Now I will create synonyms pointing to objects I defined by myself.
Accessing Objects in a Classical Schema

I assume, that the external schema I want to access is already existing. The example schema EPM_DEV can be created by using repo https://github.com/CGilde/syn-prov-classic. I also assume, there is already a project with a db module existing in the XSA Web IDE. We will insert the synonyms into this project. A git repo for the project with the complete coding can be found at https://github.com/CGilde/syn-hdi-classic-1.

Synonyms in HANA XS Advanced, Introduction

Why Synonyms?

A complex HANA data warehouse might use several DB schemas in which tables, views and other
DB objects reside. E.g., there might be a replicated ERP schema managed by SLT, a Netweaver/BW schema managed by the Netweaver Stack, and a “native” HANA schema, all residing in the same HANA instance and all of them consumed by the same data warehouse application.

How to – Import SFLIGHT sample data into HANA from a local computer

As you discovered few seconds ago, HANA doesn’t come with any preloaded sample data.

So, before starting to play with your brand new system, you need to find and load some data.

Luckily SAP provides for free its flight data model (you can download it here unluckillly the previous link doesn’t work anymore; I will try to fix this issue asap) – it’s a good starting point since it contains a sufficient amount of data and a limited number of tables.