Is SAP HANA a database or an OS ?

[Former Member]

I was going through the SAP HANA development guide, trying to understand the basics like why HANA, how it is different from existing database softwares.

It is claimed that SAP HANA could support parallel processing and below is the sentence supporting the claim:

"If multiple columns need to be searched or aggregated, each of these operations can be assigned to a different processor core"

Is it possible for a database to assign operations to the cores of processor or did I understand the meaning of the above sentence in a wrong way.

[lbreddemann · Accepted solution]

Hey Raja

Raja sekar wrote:
"If multiple columns need to be searched or aggregated, each of these operations can be assigned to a different processor core"
Is it possible for a database to assign operations to the cores of processor or did I understand the meaning of the above sentence in a wrong way.

This is not only possible to do for a database but in fact for any multi-threaded program on current operating systems.

You simply create a new thread and have your code run in this new thread. The O/S task scheduler will automatically assign thread-execution time to available CPU cores.

The key point for SAP HANA is that our developers designed it in such way, that a lot of the internal functionality can actually run in its own thread in parallel to other threads.

By doing this, a task that took, say 10 seconds with one thread could be spread over 4 threads and now takes only 3 seconds to complete.

- Lars

[Former Member]

Raja,

SAP HANA is a database. It is a home to store data and get it back in future. When you install it there is nothing in it, but it is ready for you to start adding the data you want to store. It is something what you do with any other DB (e.g. Oracle, DB2). It is true that HANA runs on specific hardware and as of now it cannot be installed on any other platform apart then Linux ( & Hardware specific). HANA is fully ACID compliance and therefore I would call it a Database.

SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA can help customers simplify IT by bringing

together analytics and transactions for reduced total cost of ownership.

BW on HANA means you have your underlying database as HANA instead any other DB. In this methodology you need to take the export of your BW System and import in while installing BW on HANA.

Hopw this help you to understand HANA and it is not a OS (As of now till HANA SP05 can only be installed on Linux SUSE)

Thanks !

[Former Member]

Hi Prateek,

There is more to my question, How hana being a database, is capable of doing tasks that are to be done by an OS ?

I know it is a database, but how it can allocate the tasks to processor's core ?

Thanks.

[former_member184768]

Hi Raja,

First of all, quite an interesting question "Is SAP HANA a database or an OS ?". Well it is a platform which provides "In-Memory columnar database" on Multicore CPU architecture. You can refer to a nice blog for a quick introduction to HANA here.

A couple of blogs on HANA multicore CPU architecture are available below.

http://www.saphana.com/community/blogs/blog/2013/04/22/massively-parallel-processing-on-hana

http://www.saphana.com/community/blogs/blog/2013/05/09/hana-is-more-than-in-memory

Now, to your second question.

Raja sekar wrote:
Is it possible for a database to assign operations to the cores of processor or did I understand the meaning of the above sentence in a wrong way.

Then the first blog will help you understand the concept in details.

Regards,

Ravi