As a founding member of CBD (center for cloud computing and big data) at ECNU, SAP has been working closely with ECNU on big data research since the announcement in summer of 2012 at SAP Sapphire Beijing. SAP & ECNU has kicked off on several front running projects: how SAP HANA could help in certain areas that we could leverage the researches done by ECNU.
So, when we asked Professor Gong, who is working on Big data research in ECNU & the CBD center if SAP could be part of the VLDB summer school, maybe hosting a one day SAP HANA day? For those of you not familiar with VLDB summer school in china, the candidates are the young professors from China, and their outstanding graduate students. We are eager to see what they would think about SAP’s latest technology. Thanks to ECNU, they welcome SAP to be part of the sponsors! It is a great opportunity for us, the first ever event that our Developer Experience team driven for such a close connection with database experts in China! We would try all means to get this done! You could ask me later, if you want to know the adventure I went through ;-).
I started working with Patrick Weng weeks ago about the logistics and content. I really can’t thank Patrick enough! And of course, Benjamin Chiu, and Charles Guo who stepped in at last minute when there was an emergency. Couple days before the event, it was my first visit at ECNU campus. The campus is beautiful: Lots of trees, with a river running through. It was like a quiet secret garden tugged away in the busy & noisy Shanghai. Note: the white building next to the water, it is the place for VLDB summer school.
The security guard was doing his duty blocking off taxi to get into the campus (for those of you who visited Shanghai, you know what I meant: with a straight face & shouting…)
I tried hard to convince the guard (with my almost tearing eyes…) that if he won’t let my taxi get into the campus, me, a tiny woman, might be in danger under the heat with my two giant posters, my handouts, a huge piles of SAP founder Hasso Plattner’s SAP HANA books, plus our beautiful developers.sap.com stickers and …, I have to figure out which hand to hold the umbrella (everyone carries one here, it is at least 39 degree Celsius). And, what do you think? I got in with my taxi! Yippee! There is still nice security guard in China!
(The stand-by-itself poster, in Chinese, it’s called 一拉寶, means “One-pull Babe”, see the picture below, aren’t they lovely!).
Finally, it is the day! On Monday, July 22nd, SAP HANA day in ECNU. Part of VLDB summer school program.
In the morning, we have Professor Wang, who was the previous chairwoman for VLDB Database School China gave an overview of the motivation for the school (founded in 2002). She reminds the younger generation to carry on the spirit of previous and work hard on the study. Next, we have the new chairman that will lead VLDB Database School China activities: Professor Zhou (see Picture).
SAP Vice Present Dr. Ming-Chien Shan (without his help, we would not have the opportunity to connect with ECNU!) gave a speech around SAP HANA, and talked about why SAP HANA could be so interesting for the audience. We had our SAP Senior Principle consultant Patrick Weng gave an in depth overview of SAP HANA.
Charles Guo, our senior development manager from SAP China Partner team gave the audience the real case of how customers get innovative about SAP HANA, and bring the reality of customers' real world situation into this group of researchers. For the slides of the sessions, please see the link: http://database.ecnu.edu.cn/index.php/component/content/article?id=135
In the afternoon, we held a hands-on workshop for the group to experience how SAP HANA looks & feels.
We have lots of interests, and the students are very eager to find out more about the new technology from SAP.
During the record setting hot & humid day in Shanghai, I am pretty impressed by this group of professors & students. Remind me of my old days in school ;-).
Several professors & students come to me and thank us to bring the SAP HANA to them and share with them our use cases and latest technology. They really like the idea of bringing in enterprise experience from Software Company such as SAP to their otherwise, consumer & research oriented environment.
They expressed the ease of use of SAP HANA: "It takes no time for me to get right into it.", "It uses lots of easy SQL statements". "You could build your own models easily and freely!". "It is very fast". One of my favorite: “Compare to Oracle, HANA is much easier to get your hands on!” And this one, I think, everyone will agree that it totally makes our day! “The combination of theory and practical cases, it really motivates me to do further study on big data and in memory computing”.
VLDB summer school in China has a long history and mandated mission to bring the latest technology in database to China academia. SAP is honored to have the opportunity to have a whole day to introduce SAP HANA to the group of outstanding students and professors.
It is our team's first experience working with VLDB Database School China. I am really grateful for all the support from Professors in ECNU and coworkers from SAP to make this happen. Of course to all of you: the participants who sit through our session with passion!
We will see you next year!
