Some key points about SAP HANA Technology & Architecture

[Former Member]

The term SAP HANA is used for both (in-memory) database and an application platform.

SAP HANA is a platform offered as both an appliance and a cloud service.

SAP HANA in-memory database is a specialized database with following features

• All the read & write operations, take place in memory.
• Data can be stored both in row and column format.
• Every column is a secondary index and there is no need to maintain separate indexes.
• It has a much better Data compression as data from the same column can be stored together
• It utilizes distributive, multiprocessing & massive parallel processing capabilities of modern CPUs.

It comes with a tightly integrated lightweight application server out-of-the-box, SAP HANA XS or Extended Application Services. SAP HANA XS is esigned/engineered specificly for SAP HANA database and is closely integrated with it to take care of

• validation logic
• control flow logic
• service enablement logic

as most of

• calculation logic
• data-intensive processing

are pushed down into the database layers to leverage the power of the features mentioned above.

HANA Extended Application Services uses

• server-side JavaScript as the main programming language 
• supports REST-based OData services with both JSON and Atom XML rendering

using which complex transnational business applications can be build.

Data-intensive logic can be written in

• SQL and SQL Script and
• it also has built-in support for XML for Analysis (XMLA) and Multidimensional Expression language (MDX) access for analytics.

The above information is just to get started. I would keep updating this blog with more up-to-date information.