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SAP HANA (HochleistungsANalyseAnwendung or High-performance ANalytic Application) is an in-memory, column-oriented,
relational database management system A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relati ...
developed and marketed by
SAP SE Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a ...
. Its primary function as the software running a database server is to store and retrieve data as requested by the applications. In addition, it performs advanced analytics (
predictive analytics Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events. In busine ...
, spatial data processing, text analytics, text search, streaming analytics, graph data processing) and includes extract, transform, load (ETL) capabilities as well as an
application server An application server is a server that hosts applications or software that delivers a business application through a communication protocol. An application server framework is a service layer model. It includes software components available to a ...
.


History

During the early development of SAP HANA, a number of technologies were developed or acquired by
SAP SE Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a ...
. These included TREX search engine ( in-memory column-oriented search engine), P*TIME (in-memory
online transaction processing In online transaction processing (OLTP), information systems typically facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications. This is contrasted with online analytical processing. The term "transaction" can have two different meanings, both of w ...
(OLTP) Platform acquired by SAP in 2005), and MaxDB with its in-memory liveCache engine. The first major demonstration of the platform was in 2008: teams from
SAP SE Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a ...
, the
Hasso Plattner Institute The Hasso Plattner Institute (Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Digital Engineering gGmbH), abbreviated HPI, is a German information technology institute and faculty of the University of Potsdam located in Potsdam near Berlin. The teaching an ...
and
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
demonstrated an application architecture for real-time analytics and aggregation called HYRISE. Former SAP SE executive,
Vishal Sikka Vishal Sikka (born May, 1967) is the Founder and CEO of Vianai, former CTO of SAP AG, and former CEO of Infosys. He currently also serves on Oracle's board of directors, the supervisory board of the BMW Group and as an advisor to the Stanford ...
, mentioned this architecture as "Hasso's New Architecture". Before the name "HANA" stabilized, people referred to this product as "New Database". The software was previously called "SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance". A first research paper on HYRISE was published in November 2010. The research engine is later released open source in 2013, and was reengineered in 2016 to become HYRISE2 in 2017. The first product shipped in late November 2010. By mid-2011, the technology had attracted interest but more experienced business customers considered it to be "in early days". HANA support for
SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) is SAP’s Enterprise Data Warehouse product. It can transform and consolidate business information from virtually any source system. It ran on industry standard RDBMS until version 7.3 at which point it began to t ...
(BW) was announced in September 2011 for availability by November. In 2012, SAP promoted aspects of
cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
. In October 2012, SAP announced a
platform as a service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computing ...
offering called the SAP HANA Cloud Platform and a variant called SAP HANA One that used a smaller amount of memory. In May 2013, a
managed private cloud Managed Private Cloud refers to a principle in software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serves a single client organization (tenant), and is managed by a third party. The third-party provider is responsible ...
offering called the HANA Enterprise Cloud service was announced. In May 2013, Business Suite on HANA became available, enabling customers to run SAP Enterprise Resource Planning functions on the HANA platform. S/4HANA, released in 2015, written specifically for the HANA platform, combines functionality for ERP, CRM, SRM and others into a single HANA system. S/4HANA is intended to be a simplified business suite, replacing earlier generation ERP systems. While it is likely that SAP will focus its innovations on S/4HANA, some customers using non-HANA systems have raised concerns of being locked into SAP products. Since S/4HANA requires an SAP HANA system to run, customers running SAP business suite applications on hardware not certified by SAP would need to migrate to a SAP-certified HANA database should they choose the features offered by S/4HANA. Rather than versioning, the software utilizes
service pack In computing, a service pack comprises a collection of updates, fixes, or enhancements to a computer program, software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Companies often release a service pack when the number of individ ...
s, referred to as Support Package Stacks (SPS), for updates. Support Package Stacks are released every 6 months. In November 2016 SAP announced SAP HANA 2, which offers enhancements to multiple areas such as database management and application management and includes two new cloud services: Text Analysis and Earth Observation Analysis. HANA customers can upgrade to HANA 2 from SPS10 and above. Customers running SPS9 and below must first upgrade to SPS12 before upgrading to HANA 2 SPS01.


Architecture


Overview

The key distinctions between HANA and previous generation SAP systems are that it is a column-oriented, in-memory database, that combines OLAP and OLTP operations into a single system; thus in general SAP HANA is an "online transaction and analytical processing" (OLTAP) system, also known as a
hybrid transactional/analytical processing Hybrid transaction/analytical processing (HTAP) is a term created by Gartner Inc., an information technology research and advisory company, in its early 2014 research report ''Hybrid Transaction/Analytical Processing Will Foster Opportunities for ...
(HTAP). Storing data in
main memory Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit (CPU) of a comput ...
rather than on disk provides faster data access and, by extension, faster querying and processing. While storing data in-memory confers performance advantages, it is a more costly form of data storage. Observing data access patterns, up to 85% of data in an enterprise system may be infrequently accessed therefore it can be cost-effective to store frequently accessed, or "hot", data in-memory while the less frequently accessed "warm" data is stored on disk, an approach SAP have termed "Dynamic tiering". Column-oriented systems store all data for a single column in the same location, rather than storing all data for a single row in the same location (row-oriented systems). This can enable performance improvements for OLAP queries on large datasets and allows greater vertical compression of similar types of data in a single column. If the read times for column-stored data is fast enough, consolidated views of the data can be performed on the fly, removing the need for maintaining aggregate views and its associated
data redundancy In computer main memory, auxiliary storage and computer buses, data redundancy is the existence of data that is additional to the actual data and permits correction of errors in stored or transmitted data. The additional data can simply be a comple ...
. Although row-oriented systems have traditionally been favored for OLTP, in-memory storage opens techniques to develop hybrid systems suitable for both OLAP and OLTP capabilities, removing the need to maintain separate systems for OLTP and OLAP operations. The index server performs session management, authorization, transaction management and command processing. The database has both a row store and a columnar store. Users can create tables using either store, but the columnar store has more capabilities and is most frequently used. The index server also manages persistence between cached memory images of database objects, log files and permanent storage files. The XS engine allows web applications to be built. SAP HANA Information Modeling (also known as SAP HANA Data Modeling) is a part of HANA application development. Modeling is the methodology to expose operational data to the end user. Reusable virtual objects (named calculation views) are used in the modelling process.


MVCC

SAP HANA manages concurrency through the use of
multiversion concurrency control Multiversion concurrency control (MCC or MVCC), is a concurrency control method commonly used by database management systems to provide concurrent access to the database and in programming languages to implement transactional memory. Description ...
(MVCC), which gives every transaction a snapshot of the database at a point in time. When an MVCC database needs to update an item of data, it will not overwrite the old data with new data, but will instead mark the old data as obsolete and add the newer version.


Big data

In a scale-out environment, HANA can keep volumes of up to a petabyte of data in memory while returning query results in under a second. However, RAM is still much more expensive than disk space, so the scale-out approach is only feasible for certain time critical use cases.


Analytics

SAP HANA includes a number of analytic engines for various kinds of data processing. The Business Function Library includes a number of algorithms made available to address common business data processing algorithms such as asset
depreciation In accountancy, depreciation is a term that refers to two aspects of the same concept: first, the actual decrease of fair value of an asset, such as the decrease in value of factory equipment each year as it is used and wear, and second, the ...
, rolling forecast and
moving average In statistics, a moving average (rolling average or running average) is a calculation to analyze data points by creating a series of averages of different subsets of the full data set. It is also called a moving mean (MM) or rolling mean and is ...
. The Predictive Analytics Library includes native algorithms for calculating common statistical measures in areas such as clustering,
classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes. It may also refer to: Business, organizat ...
and time series analysis. HANA incorporates the open source statistical programming language R as a supported language within
stored procedures A stored procedure (also termed proc, storp, sproc, StoPro, StoredProc, StoreProc, sp, or SP) is a subroutine available to applications that access a relational database management system (RDBMS). Such procedures are stored in the database data di ...
. The column-store database offers
graph database A graph database (GDB) is a database that uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. A key concept of the system is the '' graph'' (or ''edge'' or ''relationship''). The graph rel ...
capabilities. The graph engine processes the Cypher Query Language and also has a visual graph manipulation via a tool called Graph Viewer. Graph data structures are stored directly in relational tables in HANA's column store. Pre-built algorithms in the graph engine include pattern matching, neighborhood search, single shortest path, and strongly connected components. Typical usage situations for the Graph Engine include examples like supply chain traceability, fraud detection, and logistics and route planning. HANA also includes a spatial database engine which implements spatial data types and SQL extensions for CRUD operations on spatial data. HANA is certified by the Open Geospatial Consortium, and it integrates with ESRI's ArcGIS geographic information system. In addition to numerical and statistical algorithms, HANA can perform text analytics and enterprise text search. HANA's search capability is based on “fuzzy” fault-tolerant search, much like modern web-based search engines. Results include a statistical measure for how relevant search results are, and search criteria can include a threshold of accuracy for results. Analyses available include identifying entities such as people, dates, places, organizations, requests, problems, and more. Such entity extraction can be catered to specific use cases such as Voice of the Customer (customer's preferences and expectations), Enterprise (i.e. mergers and acquisitions, products, organizations), and Public Sector (public persons, events, organizations). Custom extraction and dictionaries can also be implemented.


Application development

Besides the database and data analytics capabilities, SAP HANA is a web-based application server, hosting user-facing applications tightly integrated with the database and analytics engines of HANA. The "XS Advanced Engine" (XSA) natively works with
Node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript cod ...
and JavaEE languages and runtimes. XSA is based on Cloud Foundry architecture and thus supports the notion of “Bring Your Own Language”, allowing developers to develop and deploy applications written in languages and in runtimes other than those XSA implements natively, as well as deploying applications as
microservices A microservice architecture – a variant of the service-oriented architecture structural style – is an architectural pattern that arranges an application as a collection of loosely-coupled, fine-grained services, communicating through lightwe ...
. XSA also allows
server-side In the client–server model, server-side refers to programs and operations that run on the server. This is in contrast to client-side programs and operations which run on the client. General concepts Typically, a server is a computer applicati ...
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
(XSJS). Supporting the application server is a suite of application lifecycle management tools allowing development deployment and monitoring of user-facing applications.


Deployment

HANA can be deployed
on-premises On- premises software (abbreviated to on-prem, and incorrectly referred to as on-premise) is installed and runs on computers on the premises of the person or organization using the software, rather than at a remote facility such as a server farm ...
or in the
cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...
from a number of cloud service providers. HANA can be deployed on-premises as a new appliance from a certified hardware vendor. Alternatively, existing hardware components such as storage and network can be used as part of the implementation, an approach which SAP calls "Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI)". HANA is certified to run on multiple
operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
including
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SUSE Linux Enterprise (often abbreviated to SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop com ...
and
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop ...
. Supported hardware platforms for on-premise deployment include
Intel 64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mo ...
and POWER Systems. The system is designed to support both horizontal and vertical scaling. Multiple cloud providers offer SAP HANA on an
Infrastructure as a Service The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...
basis, including: *
Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...
*
Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...
*
Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offered by Google, is a suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube. Alongsi ...
* IBM Softlayer * Huawei FusionSphere SAP also offer their own cloud services in the form of: * SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, a private managed cloud * SAP Business Technology Platform (previously known as SAP Cloud Platform and HANA Cloud Platform),
Platform as a service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computing ...


Editions

SAP HANA licensing is primarily divided into two categories. Runtime License: Used to run SAP applications such as SAP Business Warehouse powered by SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA. Full Use License: Used to run both SAP and non-SAP applications. This licensing can be used to create custom applications. As part of the full use license, features are grouped as editions targeting various use cases. * Base Edition: Provides core database features and development tools but does not support SAP applications. * Platform Edition: Base edition plus spatial, predictive, R server integration, search, text, analytics, graph engines and additional packaged business libraries. * Enterprise Edition: Platform edition plus additional bundled components for some of the data loading capabilities and the rule framework. In addition, capabilities such as streaming and ETL are licensed as additional options. As of March 9, 2017, SAP HANA is available in an Express edition; a streamlined version which can run on laptops and other resource-limited environments. The license for SAP HANA, express edition is free of charge, even for productive use up to 32 GB of RAM. Additional capacity increases can be purchased up to 128 GB of RAM.


See also

* Comparison of relational database management systems *
Comparison of object-relational database management systems Comparison or comparing is the act of evaluating two or more things by determining the relevant, comparable characteristics of each thing, and then determining which characteristics of each are similar to the other, which are different, and t ...
*
Database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...
* List of relational database management systems * List of column-oriented DBMSes *
List of in-memory databases This article is a list of in-memory database system software. References {{Reflist, colwidth=30em * In memory ''In Memory'' is Nevermore's only EP. It was recorded in April and May 1996 and released on July 23, 1996. It features a Bauhaus ...
*
List of databases using MVCC The following database management systems and other software use multiversion concurrency control. Databases * Altibase * Berkeley DB * Cloudant * Cloud Spanner * Clustrix * CockroachDB * Couchbase * CouchDB * CUBRID * IBM Db2 – since IBM D ...


References


External links

* {{Official website
SAP HANA, Developer edition

When to Use an In-Memory Database

SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems

SAP HANA : In-Memory made in SAP

SAP S/4HANA Journey with Automation
SAP SE 2010 software Proprietary database management systems Big data products Column-oriented DBMS software for Linux Proprietary commercial software for Linux