ABAP On HANA - My experience in SAP Inside Track

[Former Member]

Hello all,

I would like to share my knowledge, which I gained from SIT (SAP Inside Track), 2014. Before getting started with a particular topic, I would like to share my experience on SIT, which was conducted in Hyderabad. It was a great pleasure for me to be a part of SIT. There were many valuable sessions throughout the day for 3 tracks (Technical, Functional and Analytical). As basically I am from technical side, the topics which they chosen are really excellent and presented in a very good manner.

Let me share you some of the points in ‘ABAP ON HANA’ which I learnt from the sessions, along with the points I collected apart from sessions, which I hope will be useful for you all to get the overview of this topic.

INTRODUCTION:

• The main theme of this topic is: ‘Accelerate, Extend, Innovate using as ABAP and SAP HANA’.
• This topic shows how, capabilities of ABAP have been enhanced for HANA development.
• All ABAP applications have been optimized for SAP HANA:
  • Deeper and better integration with accelerate and real time data access.
  • New tools to optimization potential.
  • Delightful user experience and easy access.
  • New possibilities to build applications.
  • Real-time analysis with embedded analysis.
  • Develop like never before using ABAP in Eclipse.

MIGRATION FROM ABAP TO HANA:

• ABAP code only using database independent features continue to run after migration to HANA.
• General performance guidelines stay valid for SAP HANA.
• Custom code transition:
  • Avoid (Functional) regression.
  • Detect (Additional) performance optimization potential.
• Required and recommended adaptions:
  • Database migration related
  • Functional related
  • Performance related

NEW PARADIGM:

• Code pushdown means delegating data intense calculations to the database layer. It does not mean push ALL calculations to the database, but only those that make sense.
• Example: If you want to calculate the amount of all positions of invoices. You should not select all positions of those invoices and calculate the sum in a loop. This can be easily done by using an aggregation function ( SUM() ) on the database.

                               

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ABAP AND HANA:

• One basic difference between ABAP and HANA is, ABAP is based on sequential execution while HANA is based on parallel execution.
• Widely used Insert statement in ABAP is replaced with Delta Merging in HANA.

SQL MONITOR:

• Transaction code: SQLM.
• It displays performance data on process level.
• It allows drill down from process level to single database operation
• Can run in production with minimal overhead (Less than 3%).
• The monitoring cycle consists of 4 phases:
  • Activation – Activate the monitoring.
  • Monitoring – Check & ensure the monitoring status.
  • Deactivation – Deactivate the monitoring.
  • Reset – Archive the collected data and reset the monitoring.
• Below are some screenshots of SQL monitor.
  • It consists of following buttons:
    • All Servers: To select all servers for monitoring.
    • Select Servers: To select some particular servers for monitoring.
    • Activate/Deactivate: To Activate/Deactivate the monitoring.

     Main Screen of SQLM:

    

     Log History:

    

• Log History shows all the SQL statements running under the server along with following details:
  • Number of times the statement runs.
  • Duration of each statement.
  • Program in which the SQL statement is executing.
  • Data and Time of execution, etc.

CONCLUSION:

• ABAP is and will continue to be basis for applications.
• ABAP 7.4 facilities leveraging SAP HANA features.
• SAP HANA offers many new possibilities for ABAP based applications.

NOTE: All screenshots have been taken from net courtesy SAP.

Thanks & Regards,

Imran Khan.