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SAP HANA 2.0 Highlights | SAP HANA 2.0 - An Introduction

dvankempen
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎01-18-2020 4:23 PM






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.


New and Changed


In a previous blog, we looked into the differences between the SAP HANA 1.0 and 2.0 releases, and addressed the built-in application server architectures SAP HANA eXtended Application Services (XS) classic and advanced models, tenant databases, and the development and administration tools SAP HANA studio, workbench and cockpit, only to conclude that these at first sight distinctive features are actually common to both versions (albeit with some nuances).
For the full story, see:

So, what's the difference?

Well, simply put, all the new features added since the release of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 00!



Development on the SAP HANA 1.0 code line stopped with SPS 12 and all revisions released since have been maintenance revisions containing only corrections and no new "capabilities". The latest one shipped last week (time of writing), maintenance revision number 122.29 which spells maintenance revision 29 of standard revision 2 of SPS 12 (note 2871821 - SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 12 Database Maintenance Revision 122.29).

As there was only six months development time between releases 1.0 SPS 12 and 2.0 SPS 00 (released May and November 2016), SAP HANA 1.0 and 2.0 were not all that different initially. Without code spilt, it would have been SPS 13. In fact, the certification exam codes act as a reminder: C_HANATEC_16 (and IMP and DEV) for 2.0 SPS 04 was just made available (and for those who spotted the counting error, chapeau! - there was no exam for SPS 00).

What's New


But that was then. Since late 2016, there have been five SPS releases for SAP HANA 2.0. The latest  was SPS 04 from April 2019 and that is one month short of three full years of feature development.

Documentation and Release Notes


We see this reflected in the What's New in the SAP HANA Platform 2.0 guide, almost 400 pages, yet it only contains the shortest possible description of the features. For a more complete understanding we are directed to the documentation and related SAP notes.
For persistent memory, for example, it is a couple of lines


That's it.

But wasn't persistent memory a big deal? Absolutely. Persistent memory is a big deal but the What's New guide is not a marketing document but a highly condensed list of new and changed functionality. It is a not an easy read as you often only get the delta.

Road Map


More presentable is the road map. The last one dates from December 2019:

Here we find a list of recent and planned innovations, product direction and vision.



On the map we also find highlights and feature summary of four pages (excerpt below).



For anyone in product management this will be perfectly clear, no doubt, but for those outside I am less confident.

To make all the new stuff a bit more digestible we have compiled in this blog some of the highlights released in the last three years and that set the 2.0 release apart from 1.0.






CAVAEAT: None of this works on SAP HANA 1.0. Development on this edition stopped in 2016. 


Performance with Persistent Memory


For example. Great feature. Use RAM as storage. Access times in nanoseconds (like DRAM) and not microseconds (like SSD or network). Need to restart? No problem, as the column store main data remains in memory. No longer do we have to wait for terabytes of data to be loaded from storage.

In addition, PMEM can store more data than DRAM. This makes it possible to increase main memory capacity or, alternatively, provide the same capacity but then for less as PMEM is cheaper than DRAM.



(from SAP HANA & Persistent Memory, blog post by Andreas Schuster)

For more information, see (shortlist, google for more)


There is also a FAQ knowledge base article (KBA) in the SAP ONE Support launchpad


High Availability with Active/Active Read-Enabled


System replication provides high availability (HA) for SAP HANA. It was introduced in SAP HANA 1.0 (SPS 07, 2014) to complement the storage replication options provided by SAP hardware partners.  It also complements the high availability provided by the multiple host scale-out configuration of SAP HANA, known as a "distributed system", with its worker and standby hosts, within or across datacenters.

SAP HANA 2.0 system replication (SR) includes

  • Active/Active Read-Enabled (option)

  • Multi-target SR

  • Multi-tier SR

  • Invisible takeover

  • Time travel


System replication creates a duplicate production system. This cost more money of course, but having no production system anymore also does not come cheap. To make the total-cost-of-ownership picture of this HA solution more attractive, the active/active read-enabled SR option makes it possible to use the secondary system for read-only queries. Not only are we now actively using the secondary system and hence improving system performance as a whole (two can do more than one), we are also improving response times on the primary system enabling it to take up more load. According to the technology paper referenced below this results in 50% gain in reporting capacity and up to 40% return on investment. Sounds good to me.



Multi-target SR enables us to have multiple secondary systems instead of a single one. This makes it possible to replicate both inside and outside the datacenter simultaneously.

Multi-tier SR enables to chain replication systems, for example in synchronous mode inside the same datacenter and asynchronously to a remote datacenter. The replication mode configures the synchronisation between both systems with full synch activating simultaneous commits and zero data loss.

Invisible takeover configures the "client" (and this can be the ABAP application server) to keep the connections to the primary system and to restore its sessions on the secondary system.

Time travel makes it possible to literally go back in time on the secondary system and query data no longer present on the primary. Call it the recycle bin.

System replication is used in near-zero downtime system upgrades with extensive support in SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) for automation.

There have been many more enhancements made to SR in SAP HANA 2.0.

TLDR?

Here is a tutorial video from the SAP HANA Academy. A personal favourite.





Data Anonymization and Masking


Knowing without seeing and innovate with confidence is how data anonymization was advertised when released. It. makes it possible to use data for analysis and machine learning scenarios in the context of GDPR and other privacy-protecting regulations. With k-anonymity and differential privacy algorithms the data is massaged is such a way that the outcome remains statistically valid yet no longer can be traced back to individuals. A typical case of having your cake and eat it.

For more information, see also

With data masking you can mask the query result. While the SELECT privilege is binary, either you have or you don't, the data masking is highly configurable and can be tuned to the requirements.

There are many more security capabilities and enhancements introduced with SAP HANA 2.0. For more information about SAP HANA security, see


SAP HANA Cockpit


The SAP HANA Cockpit 2.0 runs a separate SAP HANA (express) system with its own XS advanced application server infrastructure and provides a comprehensive, easy to use, system management tool.

The cockpit is a component with its own release cycle which enabled a higher rate of innovation rate for the toolset, latest release being Support Pack 11 from October 2019. For more information about what is included in each of the SP releases, see

With SAP HANA cockpit we can manage both SAP HANA system landscapes and individual systems. From the system overview, we select tiles to open apps (pages) to monitor performance, configure alerts, encryption, user management, backups, and so on.


The complementary Database Explorer tool provide schema navigation and SQL prompt for query execution.




Wait, There is More


Of course, the list above is but the smallest of selections about what's great about SAP HANA 2.0.

You would need a whole book to list them all!

Which is, in fact, exactly what we had in mind when we wrote SAP HANA 2.0 - An Introduction. In this book, we describe all what's new for all of the SAP HANA key personas: administrators, developers, security officers, data integration specialist, datacenter architects, and other.

In the book, you will learn about the SAP HANA, express edition with support for smart data integration (SDI) and streaming analytics. For security, apart from dynamic data masking and data anonymization, we also address in-flight and at-rest encryption, client-side column encryption, LDAP support and automatic user provisioning, user groups, shared business authorisations. On the topic of performance, we cover workload management with the Workload Analyzer, the Performance Monitor and other performance management tools of the SAP HANA cockpit like the SQL Analyzer. For SAP HANA sizing and migration projects, there is Capture and Replay. For data management, we have next to SAP HANA dynamic tiering with IQ inside, Native Storage Extensions (NSE) to manage and optimise storage for hot, warm, and cold data. SAP HANA 2.0 includes a document store for JSON artifacts and the SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer, edition for SAP HANA to design, analyze, and share requirements, processes, data, and IT landscapes of organisations. And more, much more!








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:










For the others posts, see


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Over the years, for the SAP HANA Academy, SAP’s Partner Innovation Lab, and à titre personnel, I have written a little over 300 posts here for the SAP Community. Some articles only reached a few readers. Others attracted quite a few more.

For your reading pleasure and convenience, here is a curated list of posts which somehow managed to pass the 10k-view mile stone and, as sign of current interest, still tickle the counters each month.

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