SAP HANA – composite post

As I started similarly with SAP BW 7.3 I try to collect all relevant information sources about in this case SAP HANA here. BTW: What’s HANA? In short it is in-memory solution from SAP. It stands for High-Performance Analytic Appliance and basically it is appliance (plus its software components) that can absorb large volumes of data (e.g. tera bytes) into its “operational” memory. The reason why it is so high performant is that all the data is in memory not stored in hard drives. It can be set up on top of SAP ERP or BW system (plus non SAP databases) without necessity to materialize data via transformations as in contrary to current DWH solutions. HANA bundles several components: in-memory computing engine, real-time replication service, data modeling and data services. As it is delivered as appliance it is depended currently on few vendors are supported: Fujitsu, HP, IBM.

Basically we can say that HANA successor of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator as moving forward into in-memory computing. Here HANA acts as persistence mechanism for SAP NetWeaver BW.

HANA components:

1. The core of HANA is called SAP In-Memory Computing Engine (IMCE or ICE, also called as NewDB or BAE). It is an engine kind of in memory database which uses row/column/object based database technology to store data. It is for parallel data processing using state-of-the art CPU possibilities.

2. HANA Studio (client app, or Studio Repository, Eclipse based editor connected to a HANA
Server backend) consists of:
    2.1 Administration console - administer and monitor database
    2.2 Information modeler - data modeling
    2.3 Lifecycle mngt - provides an HANA stack update using SAP Software Update Manager (SUM)


3. HANA Load Controller -resides in SAP HANA, coordinates the entire replication process: It starts the initial load of source system data to the IMDB in SAP HANA, and communicates with the Sybase Replication Server to coordinate the start of the delta replication

4. Host Agent -handles login authentication between source system and target system

5. Sybase Replication Server -accepts data from Replication Agent, distributes and applies this data to the target database using ECDA/ODBC for connectivity.

See complete typical HANA components: Implementing SAP HANA

Current versions:
SAP HANA 1.0 SP02 - as of 12th June 2011 in general availability


Operating system: //only following one:

64-bit SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 operating system

Upcoming version:
Nov 2011 - SAP starts rump up program for their customers to run BW on HANA as its database

Here’s list of relevant HANA information:

• ·         SDN In-memory homepage
• SAP In-memory Computing webpage
• HANA commercial homepage
• Documentation on hep.sap.com
• Documentation on CW
• 1514967 - SAP HANA 1.0: Central Note
• SAP HANA: Operational Concept (Note 1599888)
• Search for Notes in following application components:
• SAP In-Memory Database:
  • BC-DB-HDB HDB
  • BC-DB-HDB-DBA Database Administration for HDB
  • BC-DB-HDB-ENG SAP In-Memory Computing Engine
  • BC-DB-HDB-INS Installation HDB
  • BC-DB-HDB-MDX MDX Engine/Excel Client
  • BC-DB-HDB-PER Database Persistence for HDB
  • BC-DB-HDB-SYS Database Interface/DBMS for HDB
  • BC-DB-HDB-UPG Upgrade HDB
• SAP HANA:
  • BC-HAN SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance
  • BC-HAN-LOA Load Controler
  • BC-HAN-MOD SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance Modeler
  • BC-HAN-REP Replication Server
  • BC-HAN-UPD HANA update tool
  • BC-HAN-UPD-UI User interface for HANA update tool
• SAP BW related:
  • BW-SYS-DB-HDB BW HDB (HANA DB)
• BC-DB-HDB SAP In-Memory Database • BC-DB-HDB-ENG SAP in-memory computing engine
• phrase: "If you use BW on a SAP HANA database"
• keyword: "orange" //seems a lot of HANA related notes has this keyword// Project Orange is suppose to allow customers to run SAP NW BW on SAP HANA as database
• keyword: NewDB

• OSS quick link, OSS infopage, another one
• HANA solution discovery
• HANA solution deployment
• ·         In-Memory data management - a book by Hasso Plattner and Dr. Alexander Zeier
• SDN forum: In-Memory Business Data Management
• experiencesaphana.com HANA evangelize page
• sapinmemorycomputing.com marketing site
• sapinmemorycomputing.de marketing site, German version
• youtube video

Blogs:

• What should I do about HANA? A Summary of the ASUG Roadmap to HANA Webinar
• Some Practical Information About SAP In-Memory Solutions: BWA, BO Explorer Accelerated Version, HANA 
• The BW - HANA Relationship
• What does SAP mean by "In-Memory"?
• What is the future of Infocubes?
• SAP HANA Blogseries Part 1: What is SAP HANA and what is the "value" of SAP HANA ?
• Infocubes and Data Store Objects ... and HANA
• SAP In-memory - what is in the bag? 
• HANA's impact on ABAP Programming
• Podcast: Straight Talk about HANA with SAP
• HANA and BW 7.30 - Part 1 
• HANA and BW 7.30 - Part 2
• Finding SAP HANA Documentation  
• HANA - from Analytics Appliance to Vendor Consolidation
• You said you wanted to experience SAP HANA?
• Living in the Layers - Sikha's dispute on layers within enterprises 
• When does HANA become mainstream
• How BW-on-HANA Combines With Native HANA 
• Security Concept and Data Architecture: part 1, part 2
• Modeling Content Migration: part 1: Preparations, Security Requirements, Export; part 2: Import, Post-migration Activities
• SAP SLT (Trigger Based) Replication Made Easy: part 1: Planning, Preparation, Installation  
• SCN runs SAP (HANA)
• HANA backup script hint... a little bit more security, please!
• Using Excel on HANA
• SAP HANA Developer Access Beta program - get the best out of your test-drive! 
• Moving from BW-IP to SAP HANA optimized planning with the new Planning Applications Kit
• Data Provisioning in SAP HANA 
• Optimized in-memory planning leveraging SAP HANA  

BW-on-HANA:

• Red Bull's Migration of a BW to a BW-on-HANA System
• How does analytics look like on BW powered by HANA 

Backtrace:

• HANA backtrace 45/2011
• HANA backtrace 44/2011
  

Trainings:

• SAP In-Memory Appliance (SAP HANA 1.0) Elearning
• SAP In-Memory Appliance (SAP HANA 1.0) classroom
• HANA bundled training
• SAP HANA Training Options (via SAP Education North America)

 Webinars: 

• Overview of HANA and In-Memory road-map
• Updates on the SAP HANA Roadmap and Overall In-Memory Strategy

 Success (customer) stories: 

• SAP HANA in action (logon to sap.com/community needed)
• Corporate scale SAP Business Warehouse powered by SAP HANA 
• BASF
• Adobe
• Medidata 
• Procter & Gamble 
• Bosch and Siemens
• Nomura Research
• Centrica 
• Colgate-Palmolive 
• Hilti 
• Surgutneftegas 

 Where to practice HANA? 

• SAP Developer Center @ SDN: access to hosted HANA sandbox systems - currently beta version.
• Get the project:  be lucky enough to get into customer who is running HANA project. Unfortunately there are still only few of them.
• SAP Mentors: If you are a SAP Mentor then you have an access to SAP HANA Developer Access Beta program. It is an access to cloudshare.com where are virtual machines/images with HANA software (HANA Editor).
  

Funniest SAP notes ever 2

Better name of this post would be “isn’t this fail?”. But I leave this to consider it by reader. See following note: Note 1455155 - Code Scan comments

I’m really not quite sure what is this note about :-). There are 2 versions of this note however I cannot recognize neither any of them anything… Also notice a mix of German and English. I'm just wondering what quality assurance dept. is doing...

For first part of Funniest SAP notes ever see here.

SAP FTP servers

Might be that you have heard about it. Usually they are referred as sapservX servers. They are FTP server used to transfer files between customers and SAP. This is mainly for purposes of analyzing of customers issues. Here you as customer you can upload files with error description, traces, logs etc. Also SAP support can place some file for you as customer to fix some of your issues. X in sapservX represents the SAP FTP server accessible for you within the regions (in brackets physical location of server):

sapserv1: Internet via VPN

sapserv2:  no FTP access, only SNC saprouter
sapserv3: Europe and Africa (Walldorf)
sapserv4: America (San Francisco)
sapserv5: Japan (Tokyo)
sapserv6: Australia (Sydney)
sapserv7: Asia (Singapore)

For detail see following primary component on OSS:

XX-SER-NET-RCSC Remote Connection / Service Connection

Especially following notes as well:

40024 - Transferring customer files to sapserv# via ftp

37211 - ftp not via SAProuter : "connection refused"

1480434 - sFTP : How to upload data to SAP FTP servers

Furthermore there is a public FTP server ftp://ftp.sap.com of SAP available as well. In contrary to all above mentioned sapservX servers this one server as anonymous access FTP. Here you can download some of SAP software that is available for free. Like SAP DB software, etc. Before miniSAP and SAP GUI was located here as well.

SAP GUI overloaded

Today I somehow overloaded my SAP GUI :-) I was analyzing some data in SAP BW infocube. I extended no of returned records (in TA LISTCUBE) to some value of millions. And unfortunately cube had some many data… I didn’t realized how many records it attempted to download. Apparently there were many…

The only solution how to get out of this situation was to kill saplogon.exe process.

Difference between transactions RS12 / SM12 ?

Seems there is no difference; at least as of BW 3.0 and above. According SAP Note 316329 - Master data table locked locks on master data were handled differently in BW versions 2.0 – 2.1C. The difference is that not standard SAP lock mechanism was used but there was BW specific locking mechanism used. This was however removed in version 3.0 and subsequent. Therefore transaction RS12 is still in BW just because of BW history. As you can see the same ABAP report (RSENQRR2) is called by both TAs.

How to find BWA version?

Well, from SAP BW side not that easy :-) however everything is possible since there is a class CL_RSDDTREX_SERVICE.

For little bit more comprehensive information about SP of BW as itself you can call method COMP_BI_SP_BIA_REV.

Related posts:

How to check whether your ABAP NetWeaver is HANA DB based?

    Learn your BW in hard way

Magic of unwanted

It is really surprising and very funny those sudden moments which can be described as “magic of unwanted”. Usually it comes much unexpected. I was same case also for me this time. I was just looking on data load request in Manage table of some cube in TA RSA1. I was scrolling up and down… 

Yep, for first sight nothing is unusual there…

But if you have a closer look you just realize it… :-)

One more zoom here:

-      Update 29/04/2013 –

Sometime ago SAP BW surprised me with very data load request number which was generated in very funny way. Today I encounter similar thing. This time it was with technical ID of transformation.

Actually it might not tell you anything unless you are not Slovak speaking. This word is also familiar to Czech speaking people. Actually it is not very nice word. :-)

Receiving SAP Notes updates

OSS functionality of subscription to updates of SAP OSS Notes I already described with this post. You might wonder how such a note ”update” email look like. Emails are sent by SAP Notification Service (notification-service@sap.com) with subject SAP Support Portal Newsletter dd.mm.yyyy. There is much more within this email. You get here following information:

·         Spotlight News – the newest highlights from service.sap.com/support

·         My Inbox Items – email communication between you and SAP via SAP Service Channel Inbox

·         My SAP HotNews – Hot new according your setup via service.sap.com/hotnews

·         My SAP TopNotes – Top Notes according your filter settings via service.sap.com/topnotes

And finally:

·         My Info Subscriptions – here goes a list of notes that you subscribed for and they recently have changed, like following:

When SAP BEx will die?

-      - Update on 13/03/2019 –

It is clear now that BEx is obsolete. As BEx Analyzer front end tool as per SAP Note 2609031 is being sun setting and development part – BEx Query Designer is being replaced.

The BEx Analyzer shall be migrated to Analysis for Office and BEx Query Designer shall be migrated to Eclipse plugin– BW Modelling tools.

More info:

2609031 - Sunset of BW Business Explorer (BEx)

1322923 - Maintenance strategy / deadlines BW Business Explorer (BEx)

2095909 - BW Business Explorer (BEx) and dependencies on Microsoft Office, operating systems, and browsers

1995532 - BI 7.x tools - HW\SW requirements and Compatibility of Microsoft Operating Systems and Office Products

2333840 - BI 7.x tools in 750 - General Information & Limitations

-      - Original post - 

Might be that you got similar questions from your customers as well. SAP is replacing its BEx portfolio with BusinessObjects. What shall we do? Start to look for new BW front end? Try to still to BEx as long as possible? Can we live without support from its producer? In case we should switch to other tool, what tool to pick up?

In this post I just try to focus on topic of how long SAP is going to maintain BEx releases. In particular we need to distinguish between developing of new BEx version and its maintenance.

In case of 2nd question related to BEx version maintenance we have nice SAP note 1322923 - Maintenance strategy / deadlines BW Business Explorer (BEx) which answers this. SAP is maintaining BEx per different operation systems (OS). For those OSs which are not supported by their vendor; SAP stops maintenance as well. This date is called de-support date. After expiration of OS manufacturer support SAP is checking compatibility of BEx patches for approximately 1 year. This is called post mortem QA procedure. Just to highlight most used OSs:

Windows XP Professional:

De-Support: March 31, 2014

          Post mortem QA: until December 31, 2014

Windows 7:

De-Support: January 13, 2015

          Post mortem QA: January 14, 2020

In case of 1^st question developing of new BEx versions we can refer above mentioned SAP Note as well. It is said in there that within the upcoming versions of SAP GUI (currently under the shipment phase is version 7.3) there will be new versions of BEx as well. We all know how it is with SAP Notes. They all get updated from time to time. I would not be surprised if there will be no such a sentence in future in this note. Therefore we need some other more less “official” SAP sources related to this topic. According SDN’s Bex homepage; quote: “BEx is continuing being delivered within next SAP NW BW and currently there is no is no planned end of life”.

Whatever SAP has ever said days of BEx are not that bright as it would be seen. BusinessObjects portfolio is proffered by SAP. This might be experienced while you would be talked to SAP accounts managers. I have also seen projects where customer was assessing several BI frontend tools and SAP applied only with BusinessObjects and not with BEx. Of course that non SAP BusinessObjects has won.

However you perceive this topic I would say that SAP BEx will be with us for some time and there is no hurry to replace it in midterm perspective.

To see for how long your version of SAP GUI will be supported see following post:

When your SAP GUI will die?

I/O database operations

You might hear mostly from SAP basis people about I/O database operation. They used to refer to that in case something in SAP system is getting to be processed very slowly.

Basically I/O operation of any computer system or part of computer system refers to communication between two parts of system. E.g. Part A of the system passes information to part B of the system. B then return processed information back to part A.

From DB point of view we would say that any operation in the DB is I/O one. As it has to get information as an input; process it and return back information about its status.

In SAP BW we have so called intensive I/O database operations which are time and resources consuming and usually effects large portions of data. Those are following:

Index oriented: creating/rebuild/coalescing/fragmentation of indexes

Table oriented: conversions, reorganization

Client/system oriented: client/system copies/deletions, Unicode conversion

DB statistics: generating

Others: objects validation, DB media recovery, incremental conversion

For further studying this topic see following links:

Difference between DB and BW statistic

Note 806554 - FAQ: I/O-intensive database operations

Note 588668 - FAQ: Database statistics

P.S. Google calls their annual web developer conference as Google I/O :-)

How to clear BW/(SAP AS) caches

There are several places across BW tools from where clearing of different types of cache can be done.

BEx Web Application Designer metadata cache: stores metadata information about objects related to web templates. You can also delete the cache in which metadata information belonging to current opened template within the session to BW backend. To delete this cache choose in BW Web Application Designer: Menu Tools -> Setting -> Delete cache -> Delete cache. Documentation for NW2004 can be found here. This is not valid for BW based on version 7.x.

 

OLAP Cache: so called Query cache is type of cache is used to buffer BW queries data sets to be available for next query run. In this case OLAP processor first checks cache and do not need to read the data out of BW infoproviders. To clear OLAP cache run TA RSRT -> Cache monitor -> Delete or you can go via TA RSRCACHE. Online docu here. If you want to do it from your custom ABAP program you may use function module: RSR_CACHE_CLEAR_ALL_CACHES.

 

HTTP server cache: this is related to HTTP server build in SAP AS server. You can clear it via TA SMICM -> Goto -> HTTP server cache -> Invalidate cache -> Global in system. Online docu here.

BW Accelerator Consulting Services by SAP AG

I have write few posts about SAP services provided by SAP Active Global Support (AGS) like BW Go live Optimization session and moreover also about how to prepare your BW systems for those sessions. In current post I focus on services provided by SAP AG for SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator (BWA). Notice that BWA was renamed from Business Intelligence Accelerator (BIA) in January 2009.

There are 2 main groups of BWA services:

1. Consulting services:

1.A Pulse Check Service: Aim is to identify possible BI Accelerator use cases or changes to implement it in your landscape.

- Data model analysis, collection of key BI Accelerator queries.

- Evaluation of key queries on customer system (to identify critical impact of BI Accelerator on queries and maintenance).

1.B. Proof-of-Concept Service:

- Lab environment (remote): Customer provides real business data to SAP

- Customer system (on-site): Evaluation of predefined query scenarios with BI Accelerator on customer BW 7.0 production system.

1.C. Full Implementation Service: Regular implementation of BWA through complete implementation cycle.

- Installation, Configuration and Upgrades

- Performance Optimization Activities

- Post-Installation Assistance

1.D. Health Check: Help existing customers to maximize performance of BWA.

2. workshops:

W26BII (INTRODUCTORY) High-level introduction for new users

1. Architecture and Infrastructure

- TREX/BW Accelerator Services

- BW Accelerator Engine Details

- BW Accelerator Index Concepts

2. Operating BW Accelerator

- Creating BW Accelerator Indexes

- Updating BW Accelerator Indexes

- Query Execution with BW Accelerator

3. Administration and Maintenance

- BW Accelerator Monitor (RSDDBIAMON2)

- TREX Admin Tool (TREXADMIN)

W26BIA (ADVANCED) Deep technical knowledge for power users

1. Administration and Maintenance

- Installation and Upgrades

- Adding and Removing Blades

- Python TREX Administration Tool

- TREX AlertServer

- Resource Usage Analysis

2. Performance Analysis and Optimization

- Indexing Performance

- Query Performance

3. Troubleshooting

- Root-Cause Analysis

- Advanced Monitoring Concepts

- High Availability

For details of those services see here.

Preparation for SAP Remote Services/Sessions for BW

There are certain SAP services provided by SAP Active Global Support (AGS) like BW Go live Optimization session which might help customers to run their BW solution better. You as an customer can request those session via raising customer message on OSS in area: Remote Service Request of component: SV-BO-REQ and type query: Request for the Delivery of a Remote Service (for details see Note 560499 - Global Support Customer Interaction: Telephone/fax/e-mail or service.sap.com/goinglivecheck).

Once you requested it you need to prepare your system for connection from SAP. Basically there are following main requirements:

1. Your BW system must have the latest ST-SER release 701_2010_1 on the Solution Manager. Otherwise SAP cannot perform any of remote session.

2. You must have a SAP Solution Manager 7.0 (formerly 4.0) with Support Package (SP) 15 or higher installed in your system landscape

There is an ABAP report called RTCCTOOL provided that helps you to determine either you are running correct software components. Report is analyzing tools that you need for SAP sessions by online connecting to SAP OSS. Missing articles like notes, add-ons are listed afterwards. You need to implement this missing stuff before session. For details about RTCCTOOL report see SAP Note 69455.

3. Performance collectors (TA ST03N) and OS collectors (ST06) are configured and running properly.

4. Users that you going to provide SAP must have proper authorization to perform the session. Usually users with authorization profiles SAP_ALL and SAP_NEW are provided.

5. You need to open connection to particular system that is going to be examined on OSS. Particularly following types of connection are needed to be opened:

- R/3 Support
- BW GUI
- BW RFC
- HTTP Connections (if using type BW Java e.g. for web reporting)

6. BW statistics should be up and running.

For more details see SAP Note 160777.

To see all detailed description of all Support Services for Customers using SAP Enterprise Support Services see following SDN link.

What year 2010 gave to SDN?

I started last year (2009) with brief summarization of initiatives that were newly introduced on SDN. This time let me continue and take a look on new stuff that year 2010 brought on the SDN field. Following here few new SDN initiatives:

1. Idea Place: ideas.sap.com is an place where SCN community members can put ideas in any area of an relation to SAP products, services etc.
2. SAP Community Network Shop, SAP Premium Educational Products and Resources  sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/shop – meanwhile those “shop” terms was rebranded under new name SAP Community Network eLearning - Online SAP Training.
3. SDN Code Exchange Platform: sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/code-exchange allows community members to share and collaboratively develop prototypes, showcases, add-ons or event start-up ideas they would like to developed or already started developing in form of projects. Provides platform for support of code and release management, online discussions and blogs, documentation and issue tracking.
4. SAP Community Netweaver Developer Edition / License – Was introduced in Jan 2010 as addition to miniSAP versions of SAP software. See here licenses comparison to find version that suits you and download it from here. Regarding previous offerings like NetWeaver Development Pack see this FAQ. For license maintenance go here.
5. In-Memory section sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/in-memory. Soon followed by introduction of "four-element (3 focus areas)" strategy at TechEd 2010 in Berlin. Here’s SAP offers a mixture of on-premise, on-demand and on-device applications, and better application orchestration capabilities.

Regarding challenges I see in upcoming year 2011; the biggest one from my point of view would be an integration of all SCN functionalities closer together. Some parts of SCN pieces are still isolated island where user needs to login separately (idea Place) or running on different platforms (blogs, wiki, etc.). From this perspective I see a room for improvement and it is a great to see that something is going on e.g. here.

Possibilities of BEx Queries documenting

A lot of people are struggling with BEx queries in lot of areas. For example when you need to know how particular key figure is calculated. This can be very painful even more in case you have several nested structures where one key figure is comprised from several others and those are again calculated, restricted etc over and over again.

However there are some possibilities how to see query in different view apart of regular development tool – Bex Query Designer.

1. TA RSRTQ (ABAP report RSRQ_QUERYDEFINITION) - Query Definition.

On selection screen of this tool you can choose the query which definition you would like to see. On the output screen you can see all particular properties of the query: Query Properties, Filter, Characteristic Restrictions, Selection, Default Values, Rows/Columns, Free Characteristics, Rows, Columns, Cells, Formulas, etc.

  

2. Metadata repository, this is pretty know method how to see basic properties of BEx Query. You can access it from TA RSA1->Metadata Repository: