System Information
In the upcoming days and weeks, we will be publishing new tutorial videos about what's new and changed for SAP HANA Cloud. The focus of this series is on system administration with SAP HANA cockpit. For the overview blog about What's New with SAP HANA Cloud Administration, see Questions? Post as comment. Useful? Give us a like and share on social media. Thanks!  |
Video Tutorial
tl;dr? Here is the video.
https://youtu.be/xjHfYNNqRtQ
SAP HANA Cloud: System Information
System Information
System Information is one of the cards on the System Overview page of the SAP HANA cockpit. It shows the SAP HANA version, installation time stamp, operating system, and installed plugins, if any.
System Information (card)
When selected it opens the System Information view, listing additional information about the system, installation history, and installed plugins.
System Information (view)
System Information is documented in the SAP HANA Cockpit guide for SAP HANA Cloud.
SAP HANA Cockpit
SAP HANA cockpit is provided as a service on the SAP Cloud Platform and the cards and views of the SAP HANA cockpit are not specific to SAP HANA Cloud. They show the same information when connected to the SAP Cloud Platform, SAP HANA Service. This may be coincidence but time of writing the version of the cockpit for HANA Cloud and the HANA service is exactly the same.
SAP HANA Cockpit - System Overview
Although this may change, currently the SAP HANA cockpit service is similar to the one available for the SAP HANA platform (or express) edition, except that in-the-cloud we are on SP 12 while the latest version available for download from Software Downloads on the SAP ONE Support Launchpad is 2.0 SP 11. Cloud-first.
The detailed system Information line items displayed by cockpit as-a-service are not all as relevant for database as-a-service. Operating system information (OS version and OS kernel version), for example, or hardware manufacturer (<unknown>). Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that HANA Cloud runs on the latest SLES 15 SP1. In contrast, predecessor SAP HANA Service runs on SLES 12 SP2, released 2016.
SAP HANA 4.0
The SAP HANA version listed in System Information is 4.00, Cloud Edition 2020.08.00. As we are in March, we might conclude that 08 does not represent the month but a version number.
After SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03 (2018), development switched to cloud-first: new features were released first for the service and later for on-premise as SPS. For this reason, the SAP HANA Service continued as version 2.0 (currently 2.00.46, Cloud Edition 2019.13.10). For the SAP HANA Service release notes, see What's New in the SAP HANA Service (only bug fixes after 04.2019).
For the complete story about HANA in the cloud, see At Your Service: SAP HANA in the Cloud | SAP HANA 2.0 – An Introduction.
XS-exit (and Studio)
The System Information card for SAP HANA cockpit on-premise systems shows the version of XS Advanced (XSA). SAP HANA Cloud (and Service) do not include built-in XSA as the SAP Cloud Platform provides Cloud Foundry. How this all works is extensively documented but for a quick briefing see the original blog posts
- SAP HANA SPS 11: New Developer Features; XS Advanced (2015) by thomas.jung
- General Availability of the XS Advanced Programming Model with Cloud Foundry on SAP Cloud Platform (2017) by kohlhaas.sven
The initial implementation of SAP HANA XS was deprecated in 2018, to be "removed from later versions of SAP HANA", cf. 2465027 - Deprecation of SAP HANA extended application services, classic model and SAP HANA Reposito....
As expected, SAP HANA Cloud no longer includes XS nor the HANA repository, user _SYS_REPO and associated schemas (_SYS_BIC, _SYS_XS, etc.). Support for SAP HANA studio already ended in 2018, cf. 2693731 - Statement on SAP HANA Studio and SAP Cloud Platform, SAP HANA Service.
Plug-Ins
System Information also lists installed plug-ins. A standard SAP HANA system does not include any but you can install plug-ins using the SAP HANA database lifecycle manager (HDBLCM) tool. With HDBLCM we not only update the database but also install software (files). Examples are Application Function Libraries (AFL) like PAL (Predictive Analysis Library), APL (Automated Predictive Library), and EML (External Machine Learning Library) or the EPM-MDS (Enterprise Performance Management Multidimensional Services) which is required for several SAP (BusinessObjects) analytics applications to connect directly to SAP HANA information models using the Information Access (InA) service.
Plug-ins are not listed as options when we create an instance, so we can only use standard features. For the SAP HANA Service, AFL, PAL, APL, and EPM-MDS plugins were included. for SAP HANA Cloud only PAL is listed (planned but not yet available).
- SAP Note 2868742 - Differences between SAP HANA Cloud and SAP HANA Platform for SQL, SQLScript and SAP HDI (S...
- SAP HANA Cloud Compatibility Reference
Database Explorer
The latest version of the SAP HANA database explorer for SAP HANA cockpit (full name) includes an Overview tab that also lists System (General) Information.
SAP HANA Database Explorer
With CATALOG READ permission, we can also run the standard information scripts included with the Statement Library of the database explorer. The script Database Information, for example, runs a SELECT statement against the system monitoring view M_DATABASE which returns the same information as displayed on the System Information card. Other views, like M_HOST_* may also be of interest.
SAP HANA Database Explorer - Statement Library
However, as mentioned, SAP HANA cockpit and database explorer, as-a-service, are not specific to SAP HANA Cloud, so not all information corresponds to what is documented in the compatibility reference.
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