SAP IQ 16 SP08 was released earlier this summer with a variety of new and interesting features that you might not have heard much about:
- Row Level Versioned (RLV) store on IQ Multiplex
- Point-in-Time Recovery on IQ Multiplex
- OData server
- PAM user authentication
- IQ Cockpit
Let me take the opportunity to tell you a little about each one of these new capabilities.
RLV Store on Multiplex
With IQ 16, we introduced the RLV store. This is a write-optimized, in memory delta store for high speed, concurrent writes to the same IQ table. In today's era of Big Data, not only are fast queries critical for analytic workloads, but fast data ingest as well. The RLV store iin IQ 16 was supported only on an IQ Simplex, or single server configuration. With SP08, the RLV store is also supported on IQ Multiplex, making it available to our customers with clustered IQ configurations.
Point-in-Time Recovery on IQ Multiplex
Up until recently, IQ supported only data backup and restore. If you had a disk, or other catastrophic failure, and you needed to restore your IQ database, you would have to turn back the clock to the last time you backed up the database. All those commtited transactions that occurred after the backup was done would be lost. Now, IQ supports Point-in-Time Recovery - or PITR. You may now optionally backup the IQ transaction log, as well as the data. If you need to restore the database, you can restore the data backup, and also restore all committed transactions after the data backup to a point in time of your choosing. PITR is supported for both IQ Simplex and Multiplex configurations. This is a key feature of IQ 16 SP08. After all, data is one of your most valuable assets.
OData Server
SAP IQ now includes an OData server that allows web clients to communicate with an SAP IQ database server using the OData protocol. OData embodies a rich protocol for transporting data across HTTP, and has become very popular with web developers. Support of OData by IQ makes it easier for developers to integrate IQ into their applications. OData web clients can send OData requests to IQ, which converts OData concepts into relational database queries, and converts the query results back into OData responses.
PAM User Authentication
A new security feature for IQ is Pluggable Authentication Module, or PAM. PAM authentication centralizes user authentication in a separate, external system-wide module. If you already use PAM for other database, such as SAP ASE, you can use the same credentials on all of your systems. Note that PAM user authentication requires IQ's Advanced Security Option license.
IQ Cockpit
SAP IQ Cockpit is a new graphical administration tool for on-board management and monitoring of SAP IQ. Unlike SAP Control Center, SAP IQ Cockpit is designed as an on-board management solution, where you install the cockpit on each SAP IQ host to manage and monitor that system. SAP IQ Cockpit provides availability, historical, and real-time monitoring in a scalable Web application. It offers real-time alerts, and tools for spotting performance and usage trends. IQ Cockpit will plug into SAP Control Center 4.0 - a landscape monitoring facility for SAP database servers coming later this year.
In conclusion...
As you can see, SAP's investment in IQ continues, with a regular release of new features and capabilities. IQ is a key part of the HANA platform, both as an analytics oriented columnar database for petabyte scale use cases, and as a warm/cool data management extension to SAP BW and Business Suite. We hope you are excited about these enhancements to SAP IQ, and get ready to hear about compelling new features coming in the SP09 release very soon!
To read more about SAP IQ 16 SP08 features, consult the user documentation here: http://help.sap.com/iq1608/
