What HANA needs now is some …

… logging!

Yes, you just got click-baited into reading this advertisement for a product enhancement idea that I posted: Standard logging facility for SQLScript

The idea here is simple: when you write application logic in SQLScript then you very likely want to have the option to log what your program does.

This is not the logging I am talking about

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Photo by ABC Photo Archives – © 2011 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. – Image courtesy gettyimages.com

What I am talking about is a language feature in SQLScript that would allow to write out arbitrary messages during the execution of a SQLScript read/write procedure to some logging target. A target could really be anything, in this case, that can receive the logging information, e.g. a database table, the OS syslog, a logging server, a CSV file, an OS pipe, a kafka topic…

HANA SQLScript should provide the API for such a logging facility so that developers can focus on their business logic instead.

Especially with more and more application logic spread out over different micro-services, js apps and SQLScript an open and flexible logging feature could help to make sense of what an application does from one end to the other.

Another big technical benefit for a built-in logging would be that it could avoid the use of dynamic SQL and all the issues around it (security, performance, …).
Instead of pasting together an INSERT statement, a simple function call could not only invoke a potentially buffered log writing but also automatically include common technical information like current code location, timestamp, session context, user name, etc.

If you agree that such a feature is just what is missing in SAP HANA SQLScript, then go and vote for the idea Standard logging facility for SQLScript.

Note, that you have to register for the idea place first (https://ideas.sap.com/SAPHANAPlatform) and that you have to be logged on to vote.