SAP HANA Introduction

SAP HANA:The future of database technology

The capacity of main memory in servers has continuously increased over the years, whereas prices have dramatically dropped. Today, a single enterprise class server can hold several  terabytes of main memory. At the same time, prices for server main memory dramatically  dropped over the last few decades. This increase in capacity and reduction in cost makes it a  viable approach to keep huge amounts of business data in memory. This section discusses  the benefits and challenges.

In few words you can understand SAP HANA plus  analyzing this evaluation:


Typical access speeds
Disk     4,000,000 ns
Memory         0.4 ns
Speed   10,000,000

Falling prices move processing from Disk/SSD to In-Memory

In-Memory Computing

The elements of In-Memory computing are not new. However, dramatically improved hardware economics and technology innovations in software has now made it possible for SAP to deliver on its vision of the Real-Time  Enterprise with In-Memory business applications.

Using main memory as the data store
The most obvious reason to use main memory as the data store for a database is because 
accessing data in main memory is much faster than accessing data on disk.


The main memory (RAM) is the fastest storage type that can hold a significant amount of data. 
While CPU registers and CPU cache are faster to access, their usage is limited to the actual processing of data. Data in main memory can be accessed more than a hundred thousand times faster than data on a spinning hard disk, and even flash technology storage is about a thousand times slower than main memory. Main memory is connected directly to the processors through a very high-speed bus, whereas hard disks are connected through a chain of buses (QPI, PCIe, SAN) and controllers (I/O hub, RAID controller or SAN adapter, and storage controller).



Compared with keeping data on disk, keeping the data in main memory can dramatically 
improve database performance just by the advantage in access time.

Analytics Platform As Is 

Today   (SPS4– Q2 2012)

-  SAP BW on SAP HANA
-  Additional business functions and  predictive algorithms
-  SAP HANA Studio Modeler  enhancements
-  Enhanced enterprise fit and  readiness
-  Additional and enhanced data  provisioning capabilities

-  “R” integration
-  Unstructured text search
-  Enhanced security and   authentication

-  Hadoop Integration (DS 4.1)
-  BPC on SAP HANA
-  Predictive Analysis on SAP HANA
-  Desktop visualization client for   HANA (SAP Visual Intelligence)

Business Objects on SAP HANA

SAP APPLICATION WITH SAP HANA

Please read also:

Sap Hana Architecture

Sap Hana Database

SAP HANA - Data persistence

Sap Hana -In memory key concepts


SAP HANA - Additional Components

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