Thursday 30 March 2017

Replication setup using HANA cockpit 2.0 and testing Active/Active Read Enable

Prerequisites:

  • You have installed and configured two identical, independently-operational SAP HANA systems – a primary system and a secondary system.
  • The required ports must be available.
  • The same instance number is used for primary and secondary systems. The instance number +1 must be free on both systems, because this port range is used for system replication communications.
  • You have added both systems in the SAP HANA cockpit.
  • You have verified that the log_mode parameter in the persistence section of the global.ini file is set to normal for both systems.

Friday 24 March 2017

S/4HANA – The engine to the Digital Transformation

Innovation Highlights


Our environment is changing, at an unprecedented pace and fast innovators hungry for success disrupted established markets. From 2000 to 2010, 52% of the Fortune 500 companies were gone and in the middle of last century, most companies though they would least forever. If you look back since 1955, the number is even bigger, +80% of the Forbes 500 companies have either gone bankrupt, been acquired or ceased to exist.

Wednesday 22 March 2017

Google Sheets and Google Script calling SAP HANA Express

Of course, you will need to create a Google Spreadsheet. Once you are there, you need to create a Google script. It sounds complicated, but it is as easy as going into Tools -> Script editor.

SAP HANA Tutoerials, SAP HANA Materials, SAP HANA Certifications

Monday 20 March 2017

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.

SAP HANA Tutorials, SAP HANA Materials, SAP HANA Certifications
After building some applications and adding data into them, GCP warned me that my instances were overutilized and suggested a more cost-effective and better configuration. The statistics in the monitoring were in agreement, showing that the instances were hungry for more resources. Feeding more RAM and CPU to them was easy as sliding a bar or entering the exact amount of RAM I want and turning the machines back on.

SAP HANA Tutorials, SAP HANA Materials, SAP HANA Certifications

The only requirement to adding more resources is that the virtual machine is turned off.

This requirement also applies to taking a snapshot of your instance. Other than the traditional uses of HXE, I sometimes like to test different configurations or simply try what I would not dare do in a productive or even shared environment. A snapshot allows me to go back to the point where the virtual machine was up and running before, for example, locking myself out. The best part is that taking a snapshot and recovering it is almost as fast a CTRL+Z.

SAP HANA Tutorials, SAP HANA Materials, SAP HANA Certifications

Now, what you (and your wallet) have been waiting for: The Price. The basic instance can run on as low as 0.20 USD/hour. Because I keep three flavors of HANA Express Edition (server only, Server only + XS Classic Tools and Full XS Advanced installation), I tend to turn them on and off as I need one or all of them. I was expecting a big reduction of the free initial credit that I was lucky to get from Google Cloud Platform when I signed up, but no: Unlike many other providers, Google Cloud Platform bills you by the minute after a minimum of 10 minutes. In other words, not only is it unbelievably cheap but it also takes off the pressure of taking into account what time it is before you turn the instance off. You can take a look at the billing principles and estimate your monthly costs in their comprehensive pricing site.

SAP HANA Tutorials, SAP HANA Materials, SAP HANA Certifications

Google Cloud Platform also sends you weekly emails as well as the bill. Consequently, there are no surprises at the end of the month if, for example, you forgot to turn off one of your instances.

Do I need to remind you that SAP HANA, express edition, comes with a perpetual free license for productive use up to 32 GB RAM? In case this needs translation: You can have the transalytics, predictive, geospatial and real-time power of a world-class in-memory database licensed for free and a very low infrastructure cost.

Friday 17 March 2017

How to have Predictive Analytics functions [PAL] embedded in sql scripted views and applied on data in HANA Modeling

Here we are going through how we can use the Predictive Analytics functions provided via PAL in HANA in the Scripted Calculated views .

We are following the SAP provided SAP HANA Predictive Analytics Library ( PAL ) guide to do this.

PAL provides a vast business opportunity and immense business value to cater the needs of Analytics domain in projects implemented on SAP HANA platform.

Thursday 16 March 2017

RFID Sensor Integration with HANA Cloud Platform

Business case: if there is any goods need to be track from warehouse, RFID technology might be a good choice. RFID sensors with HANA cloud platform will provide live tracking of goods.

Here is the below components being used to implement this business case,
  • RFID Reader : RFID RC522
  • RFID Tag
  • ESP8266 Wifi Module
  • Hana Trial Account

Friday 10 March 2017

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.

Wednesday 8 March 2017

Internet of things in Manufacturing using SAP Hana

How Internet of things ( IoT ) are relevant to manufacturing space is a widely debated topic. As a goal of IoT  tries to deploy vast network of sensors, actuators and connect them with wire or wirelessly leveraging internet protocol. If you look at this basic goal or need then its obvious that there is major scope in manufacturing IT domain. Looking at the trends in manufacturing for two decades or so there is tremendous increase in usage of automation technologies or robotics. At larger context primarily all these IP enabled equipment’s and systems need to be integrated interms of data and hardware with larger SAP system. Its a interesting way to utilize SAP Hana in a cost effective way for real time manufacturing data.  I am proposing to utilize SAP Hana for collection and analysis of real time manufacturing data  and integrate the same with enterprise level SAP platform. I am sure seasoned enterprise architects  in manufacturing environment can put more light from technical perspective to make this solution work.

Monday 6 March 2017

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.

Saturday 4 March 2017

Connecting From ArcGIS Desktop and Pro to SAP HANA

For starters, the HANA client you install depends on which ArcGIS product you’re connecting to SAP HANA. In these screenshots, I’m running HANA Express. Since HANA Express is a multitenant system, instance 00 in this case, the port used in the ODBC Manager is 30013.

If you want to connect ArcGIS Desktop to HANA, you will need to install the 32 bit HANA Client ODBC driver. For ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Pro, you will need to install the 64 bit HANA Client ODBC driver. You will need SAPCAR.exe to unpack downloaded .SAR file containing the HANA Client.

Friday 3 March 2017

Best Practices for SAP HANA Application Life Cycle Management

Having worked with multiple customers in the Native HANA application development and analytics space, one challenge I have often seen is with migrating (or transporting – we use these interchangeably in this blog) the development objects to higher environments in the landscape. Before we get into the details of how to transport the objects, let us see how the development objects are organized in HANA.

Development content organization in SAP HANA:

The development content is organized as shown in Figure 1, the most granular element in the hierarchy is an Object – which can be a calculation view, xsjs code, xsodata code, hdbprocedure etc. These objects are grouped into Packages. A Delivery Unit (DU) can consist of multiple packages. Multiple DU’s make up a product.