Install R Language and Integrate it With SAP HANA

May 1, 2014 | 2,636 Views |

Whisly Wei

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SAP HANA

Database hanageek

We have a Chinese version of this blog.

1 R language introduce

R language is is an GNU project which based on S language, it can be treated as an implementation of S language. It is firstly developed by Ross lhaka and Robert Gentleman in the University of Auckland, New Zealand, it mainly used for statistic computing, graphing, and data mining.

Since SAP HANA SP5, it is has been enforced greatly with the integrate of memory computing and the statistic function of R language. This enables you use R as a procedure language, and call the function of R. The data exchange between SAP HANA and R is very efficient, because they all use the column storage style. The communication process between SAP HANA and R is shown below:

In order to execute R code in SAP HANA, the R code is writen as a procedure with RLANG. It is executed

by the external Rserve.For the support of R operator, The calculate engine inside SAP HANA has been extended, for the given input object, after some computing , output with a result table. Differently with the local operator, R operator can be processed by R function, when the calculate engine recognized the R operator, the R client will send a request to the Rserve, and at the same time send the parameters needed by the program, then it will begin to execute, and result data frame will be send back to the calculate engine.

currently, there are some restrictions:

1. In RLang, the input parameter can only be table types, so if you want to pass a scalar type, you need to encapsulate it into a table,.

2. the name of variable in RLang Procedure can not contain uppercase letters.

3. the RLang procedure must return at least one result ,in the form of data frame.

2 The installation of R

The installation in windows is very simple, just download the corresponding installation package and double-click the set up program and go on with next. The following will focus on the installation in Linux platform. Before installation please make sure that the related software packages exists:

xorg-x11-devel: for the support of X window

gcc-fortran: build environment

readline-devel: When using R as a standalone program.

libgfortran46: SLES 11 sp2

Then download the R language source package(R-2.15.0 has been tested), and decompress it, run the following command:

./configure –enable-R-shlib

make

make install

if the installation is successful, execute R command in the shell ,you can start the interactive interpreter of R, as shown in the following figure.

3 Integrate it with SAP HANA

(1) Install Rserve

Rserve is a server side of R based on TCP/IP. After start R, execute “install.packages(“Rserve”) “, the program will prompt you to select the image, and then it will start downloading and install it. Of course , you can also download “Rserve.tar.gz ,and execute “install.packages(“/path/to/your/Rserve.tar.gz”,repos=NULL) “, this will also lead you to install Rserve.

After the installation ,please edit “/etc/Rserve.conf”, and the following content:

maxinbuf 10000000

maxsendbuf 0

remote enable

then launch Rserve:

/usr/local/lib64/R/bin/Rserve –RS-port 30120 –no-save –RS-encoding utf8

(2) configure SAP HANA

Start SAP HANA Studio, chooseManage View, Configuration tab, navigate to indexserver.ini -> calcEngine, add the following parameters:

(4) simple test demo

The following demo will compute the square of a column of prime:

CREATE ROW TABLE “WEIYY_TEST”.“PRIME” ( “NUMBER” INT CS_INT );

insert into “WEIYY_TEST”.“PRIME” values(2);

insert into “WEIYY_TEST”.“PRIME” values(3);

insert into “WEIYY_TEST”.“PRIME” values(5);

insert into “WEIYY_TEST”.“PRIME” values(7);

CREATE ROW TABLE “WEIYY_TEST”.“PRIME_SQR” ( “NUMBER” INT CS_INT );

CREATE PROCEDURE MY_F(IN input1 PRIME,OUT result PRIME_SQR)

LANGUAGE RLANG AS

BEGIN

result<-as.data.frame(input1$NUMBER^2);

names(result)<-c(“NUMBER”);

END;

execute this procedure, the result is like this:

5 tips

Because currently the RLANG procedure only support table type parameter, but many times you need to input a scalar argument. When this happens, you can use “select from dummy” to generate a temp table.

CREATE PROCEDURE WAPPER_WEIBOSOHU(IN keyword NVARCHAR, INcrawltime INTEGER,OUT result WEIBOSOHU_TYPE)

LANGUAGE SQLSCRIPT

AS BEGIN

inputinfo=select :keyword AS “keyword”,:crawltime as“crawltime” from DUMMY;

CALL fetch_weibosohu(:inputinfo, :result);

END;

For example , the procedure above, the outer WAPPER_WEIBOSOHU procedure is a SQLSCRIPT procedure, the fetch_weibosohu is a RLANG procedure, we use “select from dummy ” to generate a temp table, and pass it to the inner procedure.

[Note: The test case for this article is based on SAP HANA SPS07 revision 70.00]

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21 Comments

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Viren P Devi August 6, 2014 at 11:30 am

Hi Whisly,

Thanks for the information.

Is there any way we can get list of functions available in HANA at the moment. I do not have R server configured yet.

Regards,

Viren

like (0)
1. Whisly Wei Post authorAugust 6, 2014 at 1:17 pm
  
  for more information ,please refer to the document:
  
  http://help.sap.com/hana/SAP_HANA_R_Integration_Guide_en.pdf
  
  like (0)
Neha Gupta May 14, 2015 at 12:44 pm

Hi Whisly,

Can I install R on Windows platform and integrate it with HANA?

Or is there any free linux cloud server available where I can install R and than use that to integrate it with HANA?

Please let me know.

Warm Regards,

Neha

like (0)
1. Whisly Wei Post authorMay 15, 2015 at 1:45 am
  
  technically speaking, you can install R on windows platform or any other distributed linux version such as ubuntu, even R version 3.0. Then install Rserve to integrate with SAP HANA(because the main component is Rserve in order to integrate). But these ways has not been tested by SAP, the official ways is R 2.15 and SUSE linux platform. see http://help.sap.com/hana/SAP_HANA_R_Integration_Guide_en.pdf
  
  like (0)
  1. Jawahar Konduru February 13, 2016 at 2:46 am
    
    Whisly,
    
    Where can I get the R libraries to download? And also is there is any sizing or PAM for R server to setup?
    
    like (0)
    1. Whisly Wei Post authorFebruary 16, 2016 at 1:51 am
      
      Hello Jawahar, you can get the R libraries in CRAN – Mirrors
      
      But for the related linux package, as far as I know there’s no PAM you have to search the packages and download them and compile them separately.
      
      like (0)
      1. Jawahar Konduru February 16, 2016 at 2:00 am
        
        Thanks for the information. Is there any server sizing specs I need to consider of?
        
        like (0)
        
        Whisly Wei Post authorFebruary 16, 2016 at 2:09 am
        
        There’s no official specification. But if you want to do the analysis you have to make sure that the data transfered to the R server can be hold in the server’s memory. And secondly, you may have to consider the network speed. As you know, each time there is a data tranportation between SAP HANA and R server.
        
        like (0)
        
        Jawahar Konduru February 16, 2016 at 2:15 am
        
        Thanks Whisly. Minimum requirements to start with please??
        
        Memory/CPU ??
        
        like (0)
      2. Jawahar Konduru April 21, 2016 at 7:44 pm
        
        Whisly,
        
        I am getting below error while installing RServe version 3.2.5 on Suse Linux. Am i missing anything?
        
        install.packages(‘/root/RServer/R-3.2.5.tar.gz’, repos = NULL)
        
        ERROR: cannot extract package from â/root/RServer/R-3.2.5.tar.gzâ
        
        Warning message:
        
        In install.packages(“/root/RServer/R-3.2.5.tar.gz”, repos = NULL) :
        
        installation of package â/root/RServer/R-3.2.5.tar.gzâ had non-zero exit status
        
        like (0)
        
        Whisly Wei Post authorApril 22, 2016 at 1:53 am
        
        I’m not sure. Please check the official document about RServe. https://rforge.net/Rserve/
        
        Hope that help.
        
        like (0)
        
        Jawahar Konduru April 22, 2016 at 2:05 pm
        
        It is not very clear. Does SAP support will help on this? Is there any R forums, can you guide me, may be I can get some help there?
        
        like (0)
        
        Jawahar Konduru April 22, 2016 at 5:52 pm
        
        Finally i got it working. Now i have another issue while running below command. Do i need below command from root or after launching R.
        
        /usr/local/lib64/R/bin/Rserve –RS-port 30120 –no-save –RS-encoding utf8
        
        like (0)
        
        Whisly Wei Post authorApril 25, 2016 at 1:39 am
        
        I don’t think it needs root privilege, you can try.
        
        like (0)
        
        Jawahar Konduru April 25, 2016 at 12:51 pm
        
        I tried that with root and also user I have created. But I am getting an error “unexpected numeric constant in “Rserve –RS-port 30120”
        
        like (0)
Ranajay Sit December 23, 2015 at 10:03 am

Hi Whisly

Your Blog is very informative.Can you guide me through the steps to be followed while setting up and configuring R server on windows machine?

Regards

Ranajay

like (0)
1. Whisly Wei Post authorDecember 24, 2015 at 2:04 am
  
  Hi, Ranajay, Personally speaking, I can give you some suggustions but this may not officially supported by SAP.
  
  In fact , in the windows environment, the main process is the same and the key is to install Rserve, which is very simple, just execute install.packages(“Rserve”); then find the location of the binary executive Rserve file, e.g. \\path_of_your_R_environment\R\win-library\3.2\Rserve\libs\x64, then you can find Rserve.exe. Execute this file and of course maybe you have to add some arguments , if there are errors(maybe report dll error), you can also call Rserve() in R environment with the arguments. If Rserve is started, you can write a small program to test it, anyway, Rserve is just a server program and can be connected by many clients.
  
  This two documents will help you.https://rforge.net/Rserve/doc.html
  
  https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Rserve/Rserve.pdf
  
  You can make it! Have a try!
  
  like (0)
  1. Ranajay Sit December 28, 2015 at 2:15 pm
    
    Thanks Whisly I guess I have to go my SAP standards and use Linux based environment.
    
    Regards
    
    Ranajay
    
    like (0)
Jawahar Konduru May 11, 2016 at 6:55 pm

Whisly,

I have a question, when I executed the call my_f(prime), I got the exact results what you showed in your screenshot. Does that mean R is executing from HANA right? Please confirm

like (0)
1. Whisly Wei Post authorMay 12, 2016 at 2:28 am
  
  I think so. congratulations!
  
  like (0)
Rashid Rashidov May 19, 2016 at 7:09 am

Hi,

I am following the the following guide in order to install R server from source code on a machine, that runs SLES 12, SP1: http://help.sap.com/hana/SAP_HANA_R_Integration_Guide_en.pdf

Unfortunately, when I try to install the kernlab package, I receive the following error message:

> install.packages(“kernlab_0.9-14.tar.gz”, repos = NULL)

Warning in install.packages(“kernlab_0.9-14.tar.gz”, repos = NULL) :

‘lib = “/usr/local/lib64/R/library”‘ is not writable

Would you like to create a personal library

~/R/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-library/2.15

to install packages into? (y/n) y

During startup – Warning message:

Setting LC_CTYPE failed, using “C”

* installing *source* package ‘kernlab’ …

** package ‘kernlab’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

** libs

g++ -I/usr/local/lib64/R/include -DNDEBUG -I/usr/local/include -fPIC -c brweight.cpp -o brweight.o

make: execvp: g++: Permission denied

/usr/local/lib64/R/etc/Makeconf:130: recipe for target ‘brweight.o’ failed

make: *** [brweight.o] Error 127

ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘kernlab’

* removing ‘/home/ruser/R/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-library/2.15/kernlab’

Warning message:

In install.packages(“kernlab_0.9-14.tar.gz”, repos = NULL) :

installation of package ‘kernlab_0.9-14.tar.gz’ had non-zero exit status

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Regards,

Rashid

like (0)