What is/was the necessity to install SAP HANA As A Secondary Database (Sidecar Scenario) ? In most simple way !!

Introduction:

What exactly comes to your mind as soon you come across the word Sidecar ? Yes , you are right – a car attached to the side of a motorcycle or any vehicle for a passenger – sounds interesting !! .

The same concept you can corelate in technical terms as defined below :

SAP HANA Sidecar is nothing but a SAP HANA platform which serves as a secondary database to an already existing SAP system with its own traditional database.

Note : SAP HANA Secondary Database is also called as SAP HANA Sidecar Database where SAP HANA is its Database – as the name suggests.

SAP HANA Sidecar Architecture : 

 Fig.1.0

Note: Traditional Database can be Oracle , MySQL MaxDB , IBM DB2 and many more.

What is/was the Necessity ?

• Lets say you have few programs/reports/transactions or any object which is taking much time in Traditional(Primary) Database except these objects your system is stable and its working pretty cool. But , you don’t want to run all your other reports, transactions etc. on SAP HANA DB as it’s not causing any problems.
• So , you need those set of programs/reports/transactions or any objects to run on SAP HANA Database , as these are taking much time even after performing all sorts of performance tuning techniques.
• This is basically because of the limitation of Non-SAP HANA Database.
• As we all know that ,SAP HANA deployment empowers a business with a speed that is approximately 3600 times faster than that of the traditional databases.
• So , if you want to accelerate all these programs/reports/transactions or any object – which is taking more time for execution, one of the option to make it work efficiently is to use SAP HANA As A Secondary(Sidecar) Database.

How does this Work ? 

• Lets say you have Report/any Object which is too sluggish and you need to make it work efficiently or execute quickly.So, what you do it ?
• For that Report/Object which is very slow in terms of execution , need to identify all the Database tables used in that Report/Object and after identifying – now you got to know that there are 5 Database tables used in that Report/Object.
• These 5 database tables are available in Traditional(Primary) Database & also the data of those 5 Database tables is stored in Traditional(Primary) Database.
• So,the data of only these 5 Database tables is replicated using SLT (System Landscape Transformation) server to SAP HANA Sidecar Database as shown in the above figure.
• Basically , SLT is a tool which is capable of doing real-time data replication.
• Once, the data replicates into SAP HANA Database with the help of SLT , reports running on Traditional(Primary) Database can read data directly from SAP HANA Sidecar(Secondary) Database – instead of processing it from the Traditional Database.

How can this be Achieved ?

• This can be done with the help of a Secondary Database connection.(Refer Fig.1.0)
• The connection from Traditional(Primary) Database to Secondary Database is established with the help of t-code : DBACOCKPIT where Connection Name of Secondary Database is maintained in order to establish the connection between the Primary & Secondary Database.
• There is a slight change in select queries of reports in order to read the data & the change is to add CONNECTION keyword followed by Connection Name before the target variable in Open SQL statements.

Conclusion:

• Generally , the customers go with this option to test the performance of SAP HANA as a Database , as they have very few reports/transactions which is causing them performance issues with the existing Traditional(Primary) Database even after taking care all sort of performance tuning techniques for those effected objects.
• Using SAP HANA Sidecar as a Secondary Database , it allows the customer to assess its capabilities & performance improvement.
• Hence , upon realization , the customers will go for full-fledged enterprise version of SAP HANA. Then ,they replicate their entire Database on it to make it fully functional.