A Guide to SAP HANA and Data Integration
SAP HANA (high-performance analytic appliance) is an application which makes use of in-memory database technology that facilitates the processing of huge amounts of data within a very short period. This is possible since helped by the in-memory computing engine, HANA processes data stored in RAM as against the usual reading it from a disk. The benefit here is that the application offers instant results from customer transactions and data analysis. HANA is the backend that runs the SAP landscape. Its primary feature is a column-based and innovative Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). This is used to store, retrieve and process data on specific core activities and by itself does not decide what tasks a business will carry out – it only processes any data related to organizations. For this reason, businesses install SAP applications that run on top of HANA such as those for finance, HR, and logistics. SAP HANA data integration and SAP HANA smart data quality load data from a variety of sources using pre-built and custom adapters either in batch or real-time. This method is deployed by installing a Data Provisioning Agent to house adapters that in turn connect the source system with the Data Provisioning Server in the HANA system. It is then possible to create replication tasks using WebIDE to replicate data or flow-graphs through Application Function Modeler nodes to cleanse and transform data before it reaches HANA.
Automated SAP data integration can process structured data from relational databases and applications, both SAP and non-SAP very quickly. Based on the source of the data, it is capable of using three types of data replication – log-based, trigger-based, and ETL-based. The relocated structured data is housed directly in memory. This is why data stored in applications that use HANA can be used quickly in real-time. SAP HANA supports a wide range of cases for real-time analytics. These include – • Supply chain and retail optimization • Forecasting and profitability reporting • Fraud detection and security • Optimization and monitoring of telecommunication network • Optimization and monitoring of energy use SAP HANA smart data access enables remote data to be accessed similar to local tables in SAP HANA without copying the data into SAP HANA. This provides a great deal of cost and operational benefits. It supports the deployment and development of the next-gen analytical applications that require the capability to synthesize, access, and integrate data from multiple systems in real-time. This is regardless of what systems are generating it or where the data is located. As distinct from other RDBMSs, SAP HANA reduces the memory usage factor by 10. This leads to improvement in performance as it uses column-oriented storage which combines OLAP and OLTP into a single structure.