HDI with SAP HANA Cloud | Video Tutorial

Schrödinger’s dumpster! Source: Richard Feynman.

HANA Deployment Infrastructure | HDI

Philip MUGGLESTONE just added another video tutorial to the SAP HANA Cloud series. In this blog, you will find the video embedded with some additional information and resources.

HDI, short for HANA Deployment Infrastructure, for some is a bit like Schrödinger’s cat: conceptually challenging. You may have heard it has to do with containers, but not related to the containers of MDC (multi-tenant database containers), Docker, Kubernetes, or Cloud Foundry. Something to do with runtime objects and development artifacts? A build tool?

Yet, new it is not. The technology has been with us for a while as HDI was introduced in 2015 (SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 11) together with XS Advanced (XSA), at the time the next-gen built-in application development and runtime environment for SAP HANA. Although often confused, HDI and XSA are related but do not depend upon each other. While HDI is highly relevant for application development with SAP HANA Cloud, XSA is not even included (you can use the Cloud Foundry instead).

So what exactly is HDI (again)?

Below a brief video tutorial that tells you all you need to know on the topic. You can watch it in about 17 minutes. What you learn is

• Where HDI originates and what problem it solves
• Why HDI is relevant for SAP HANA Cloud
• What design-time artifacts are in the context of HDI
• How HDI technically works
• How to address the conceptual challenges when working with HDI
• Where to find more information

Video Tutorial | HDI – Under the Hood

In this video tutorial, Philip Mugglestone goes “under the hood” of HDI to explain how HDI containers are architected and how to make best use of them. After providing context and background, Philip covers the topics of schema-less development, design-time artefacts and isolation including examining real-world examples hands-on. Key conceptual challenges are also addressed and a summary of key benefits to using HDI is provided.

00:00 – Introduction

00:37 – Evolution of SAP HANA

03:10 – HANA Cloud

04:16 – Design-Time Artefacts

07:18 – Under the Hood

12:20 – Conceptual Challenges

15:32 – Reference Guide

16:16 – Summary and Benefits

We Want More

Documentation

HDI has its own reference guide, which explains exactly how this all works.

• SAP HANA Cloud Deployment Infrastructure Reference

SAP Community Blogs

From the blogosphere, we have the original post introducing the topic and a later post explaining how we can use HDI without XSA or Cloud Foundry, both by Thomas Jung.

• SAP HANA SPS 11: New Developer Features; HDI
• Developing with HANA Deployment Infrastructure (HDI) without XSA/CF or Web IDE by Thomas Jung

Also of interest are these post which focus on the SQL API, developer productivity, and best practises.

• SAP HANA Deployment Infrastructure (HDI) SQL API by Halil Guenal
• SAP Web IDE workspace and HDI container isolation, or how to work on one schema with multiple developers by Sefan Linders
• Best practices and recommendations for developing HDI-based roles by Sabin Larranaga Izaguirre

NPMJS

For the actual Node.js packages, see

• @sap/hdi
• @sap/hdi-deploy
• @sap/hdi-dynamic-deploy

SAP Support

For the release notes and support information, see the SAP ONE Support Launchpad

• Component HAN-DB-DI

Post Scriptum: Empty When Full

Richard Feynman was an American bongo player who won Nobel prizes as theoretical physicist.

• www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1965/feynman

He is dead but you can follow Prof Feynman on Twitter. Strange, no? Like the cat.

• Schrödinger’s Cat | YouTube

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For the author page of SAP PRESS, visit

• Denys van Kempen

For the SAP HANA Cloud e-bite, see

• Introducing SAP HANA Cloud