HANA backtrace 36/2017

What to read? Whom to follow?

One of the important things to pick up in any community is finding out who are the people that usually have good, funny or interesting content. Many community platforms make it easy to find out who are the “leading contributors”, the “heroes”, “aces” etc.Currently, the platform SAP Community is run on struggles with this, big time.
It is actually hard to not miss new blog posts, sometimes even if one has subscribed to a specific author.

So, here is a short list of people that I noticed putting out really good content in the SAP HANA space.
This list is really just what my very biased eye has seen and my colander-like memory has not lost.

If you know more authors or think that your own material should be seen by more HANA-heads then please, do not hold back and add it in the comments section.

Laura Nevin

A SAP colleague up North close to the Niagra Falls working as a Development Architect in the HANA documentation team. Her blog “atrium” does not just have your vanilla product updates but provide the reader with a whole tour around what’s new and noteworthy with the documentation.

I find her blogs particularly well written and produced and silently wish more people (myself included) would publish such nice blogs.

• HANA 2.0 SPS 02 – SQL and System View Reference Guide
• Improve search engine results when searching for SAP HANA docs
• Indexes: The Art of Telling Users Where to Go

Lucia Subatin

Yes, also a SAP colleague, but from the other end of the world: Argentina.
Lucia has a lot to say and write about the SAP HANA Express edition.
Actually, that’s her job as she is a SAP HANA Evangelist and apparently a very good one.

• XS Advanced for (not so) dummies
• XS Advanced for (not so) dummies – pt 2: Multi Target Applications 
• Hey, Google, let me talk to HANA

Jan Zwickel

Jan is a SAP HANA product manager who has written a number of in-depth explanations of the otherwise mysterious “flags” of the graphical calculation views.
Working from SAP’s center of gravity in Walldorf, Germany he is as close to the source as it gets.

• Usage of “Keep Flag”
• Three ways to check the push-down of filters
• Example Flag “Allow Filter Push Down”

Sharyu Sarode

There’s not much that I know about Sharyu, except for that she seems rather experienced in the administration corner of SAP on HANA and that she got a knack for writing about that.

She is not an SAP employee, which makes it even better that she shares her experiences with us. Judging from her profile page, she works in Australia, just like myself.
Her blogs are well prepared and definitively worth the read.

• SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 02 – SPS Update
• SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01 – What’s the big deal? 

As mentioned, these pointers are just the content I’ve seen and liked here on SAP Community platform.

I am very happy to see that the reports of the death of the platform and the community seem to have been exaggerated and that there are interesting, read-worthy contributions from both SAP and non-SAP authors.

Thanks for that folks!

Other stuff I like to recommend

As there is so much other stuff going on outside the SAP Community let’s have a quick view at that, too.

Weapons of Math Destruction

If you work with HANA, then Big Data, Data Science, and Predictive are your daily bread. Make sure to get an understanding of the social impact this can have.

Both the book and the talk by the author are highly recommendable.

“Badass: Making Users Awesome”

from the famous Kathy-“Head first”-Sierra is a particularly enjoyable and easy read. Well designed book with good ideas on how to create succesful products and not just a bunch of features.

There you go, now you know!
Lars