Data Architecture

dvankempen · ‎11-16-2019

In this blog series you will find quotes, backgrounds, suggested further readings and other information related to my latest book SAP HANA 2.0, An Introduction published by SAP Press.

Quote/Unquote

Each chapter in the book starts with a quote (or two) and for the chapter about data architecture, we quote an American painter, an English poet, and a Japanese organising consultant.

more != less

Anyone familiar with Linux (or UNIX) will know that less and more are two different commands. According to the author of the less man pages, less is an improved version of more. Coincidence or not, abstract painters, minimalist architects, and many other artists agree on this interpretation

For more information about less and more, see

More (initial release 1978 by Dan Halbert)

Less (initial release 1984 by Mark Nudelman)

More is less. Less is more.

—Ad Reinhardt, Twelve Rules for a New Academy (1953) [source].

Reinhardt was an American abstract painter. For an art review from the New York Times, see An Abstractionism Shaped by Wounded Ideals.

If you are lucky enough to live in or visiting London or New York, you can go watch his Abstract Painting No. 5 (1962) in the Tate or No. 34 in the MOMA.

But what did Mies van der Rohe mean by less is more?

The "Less is more" quote is often associated with the German-American architect Mies van der Rohe, pioneer of modernist architecture but he never actually wrote it down. The notion occurred to him as a young man, while working as an apprentice on the AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin architected by industrial design pioneer, Peter Behrens, who also inspired Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, amongst others.

if you are lucky enough to live in or visiting Berlin, you can visit Behrens' AEG building in the Huttenstraße, Berlin (on Google maps).

For the story, see

What did Mies van der Rohe mean by less is more?

Peter Behrens, Turbine Factory by Dr. Elizabeth M. Merrill - Khan Academy

Regarding the second link (and on a side note), did you know that the SAP HANA Academy was inspired by the Khan Academy? It is their mission to provide a free, world‑class education for anyone, anywhere. See Khan Academy > About for more information and how you can help.

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.

For the first occurrence in print, we need to time travel back to the Victorian age to admire Robert Browning's Andrea del Sarto (1855) poem about a Renaissance artist (and his wife Lucrezia).

You can listen to the full poem on YouTube (quote at 4:42).

For some reason, there are also versions in Tamil, Hindi, and Bengali. He must be a popular poet on the Indian subcontinent.

To discuss his work, you can join The Browning Society (there might be local chapter).

Source poster

The best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?”

—Marie Kondo, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying. A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever (2014).

Throwing stuff away and banishing clutter is excellent advice also for the intelligent enterprise.

As presented by Dr. Hasso Plattner at the SAPPHIRE NOW conference in 2019 the global data sphere is about to explode. What if we started to do some tidying up?

For the speech about the Global Data Sphere, watch the SAPPHIRE NOW highlights video on YouTube.

Tokimeku

Now, there is a little controversy about the joy sparking part or 'tokimeku' (ときめく), as they say in Japan. According to some, the nuances have gone lost in translation.

For more information about this issue, see the LinkedIn article

Meet Cathy Hirano: The Woman Behind 'Spark Joy'

You can practice the correct pronunciation of ときめく by listening to Mrs Kondo introducing KonMari. There are numerous occurrences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FipZIrwtADg

If you can't get enough from watching other people cleaning up, there are 8 episodes on Netflix (Toying with Toddlers, Empty Nesters, etc.).

References

In the original manuscript, a long list of references to other material was included, which for space constraints and other reasons did not made it to the final book (thanks to Megan Fuerst @Sap Press for doing the ときめく).

For example, to avoid any “we recommend ourselves” marketing, other relevant SAP Press titles have not been listed in the book. Otherwise, on the topic of data architecture, we would certainly have mentioned the recent publications:

SAP HANA Data Lifecycle Management: Dynamic Tiering and Data Aging by Muhammad Iqbal

Introducing SAP Data Hub by Michael Eacrett, Swapan Saha, Gaëtan Saulnier

Data architecture is about data distribution, about performance, and about controlling cost.

In this chapter, we describe the tools the data architect works with including both built-in platform tools like SAP HANA cockpit, database lifecycle management, Web IDE and HANA studio, but also for more specific use cases, SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer and the SAP HANA Data Warehousing Foundation tools Data Distribution Optimizer (DDO) and Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM).

Also covered is the topic of scaling SAP HANA and in this chapter we explain the difference between distributed systems, nodes and hosts, clusters, and federated (linked) databases. SAP HANA can be both a multiple-host distributed system (to scale out) and a cluster using system replication (for high availability). Other database vendors implement this differently and use the term distributed for federated databases, which, again, is implemented differently with SAP HANA using smart data access and remote data sync. How this works is covered in the book.

Apart from scaling up and out, we also cover data tiering, including the notion of data aging with the temperature analogy of hot, warm, and cold storage. SAP HANA provides different technologies for this purpose and this includes persistent memory, native storage extensions (NSE), dynamic tiering (IQ Inside), extension nodes for Business Warehouse, SAP Data Hub, and the SAP HANA Spark Controller (from Apache Spark, not related to Mrs Kondo).

Wait, There is More

Then there is also the topic of data distribution, table partitioning, table placement, and table replication. These topics, and many others, are the subject of chapter 8, SAP HANA Data Architecture.

Interested?

SAP HANA 2.0 - An Introduction

Just getting started with SAP HANA? Or do have a migration to SAP HANA 2.0 coming up? Need a quick update covering business benefits and technology overview. Understand the role of the system administrator, developer, data integrator, security officer, data scientist, data modeler, project manager, and other SAP HANA stakeholders? My latest book about SAP HANA 2.0 covers everything you need to know.

Get it from SAP Press or Amazon: