SAP HANA vs SQL Server 2014

[Former Member]

Hi

I should prefix this discussion by saying I do understand that SQL Server 2014 is not a supported platform currently, so perhaps this is a philosophical discussion at this point.

I have been challenged on why should an organisation choose to implement SAP HANA (given the specific hardware requirements & license costs) verses using SAP on SQL Server 2014.

My initial reaction was that surely SAP Business Suite is being re-engineered to work optimally on HANA? 

While I can find copious volumes of documentation discussing the optimizations of business suite on HANA I cannot really see if this is specific to HANA or any in-memory database could take advantage of these optimizations. 

Some documents hint at HANA being the pre-requisite, but nothing I have read so far clearly states that HANA is a basic requirement of getting the best out of SAP Business Suite or in reality any in-memory database (SQL Server 2014, or dare I say it Oracle 12c) could be used instead.

Hopefully this will be an interesting discussion for more than just me.

regards

Marina

[ACE-SAP · Accepted solution]

Hello ,

Some quick points...

SAP never validates an RDBMS as soon as it is available...

12c won't be available for SAP before version 12.1.0.2 (SAP on Oracle Development Update (April 2014) | SCN).

12c does not have in memory features, the in memory solution from Oracle is timesten (Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Product Center)

Sql 2014 is only available since few days (1966681 - Release planning for Microsoft SQL Server 2014),

and 2012 (1651862 - Release planning for Microsoft SQL Server 2012) has only been validated since such a long time...

From what I've read the in-memory options of Hekaton can not really compete with Hana.

Spend sometime searching the Hana related sites you will find many good articles...

Best Regards

Blog: What Oracle Won't Tell You about SAP HANA | SAP HANA

http://www.saphana.com/community/blogs/blog/2013/11/13/comparing-sap-hana-to-ibm-db2-blu-and-oracle-...

Blog: Pondering the Microsoft SQL Server Announ... | SAP HANA

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your reply, I'll be sure to check out more of the HANA related collateral available on-line.

I guess where I was coming from is the roadmap for SAP Business Suite laid out by Hasso Plattner

1. A non-disruptive change of suite to
   HANA with unbelievable performance results
2. Because of the power of SQL
   only one version of suite will go forward using not
   only HANA, but also DB2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP-ASE
3. Code will be changed to support all
   databases, with some unique code for HANA
4. The biggest technological change was
   optimization for multi-threading processing
5. More and more apps will run through
   mobile and this requires processing below 3 seconds

Point 3 being the one I am pondering here - to what extent will there be "some unique code for HANA".

I am wondering if this means that essentially business suite will be comparable on all DB platforms however there are some tweaks for HANA, or that there are some more fundamental optimisations specifically for HANA to give it the competitive advantage over all other DB's.

[ACE-SAP · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I do not have experience on Hana with Business Suite, there are not that much of clients live yet.

The problem is that it is hard to know what is planned, what is really ongoing and what is only marketing... Listening to Dr Plattner Hana will allow to merge transactional & analytic usage on the same system... but I do not see this getting real soon.

If you want more info about BS on Hana join the here under MOOC

Course: SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA

Best regards

[jonbbrooks]

As per note 1966681, SQL 2014's Hekaton in-memory features will not be supported by SAP. They cite the optimistic lock management feature as the reason, although I suspect competition for license fees probably has more to do with it. I suspect they'll find a similar excuse not to support the in-memory features of Oracle 12c, but I'm guessing.

[jbrotto]

Same dilemma with SAP's other product line such as Business One. Not sure if the Business Suite has this issue but many queries made may be required to be converted to a syntax that could be read the SAP HANA database.

http://scn.sap.com/community/business-one/blog/2013/04/10/how-to-convert-sql-from-ms-sql-server-to-s...

At our organization we bought some SQL 2014 licenses and it will be used as under testing there seems to be no issues but no support by SAP to use Hekathon. There is a performance boost but no official support. If anything gets messed up SAP will not support it.

[achmad_dimyati5]

Hi All,

The real question actually how much effort from SQL Server 2014 (Hekaton) to implement the specialist Stored Procedures (porting) from SAP standard table to in-memory table?

In Memory OLTP Workload Patterns and Migration Considerations

They will get there as SAP must approve Hekaton at certain in time. Once has been certified, it just another matter of time In-memory table will be available only if the porting of table isn't complicated.

DB2 10.5 BLU has successfully done the job. And it's quite amazing the time taken of adoption from SAP to this product (1819734 - DB6: Use of BLU Acceleration).

DB2 10.5 has been released at June 2013 and by Dec 2013 it's supported by SAP.

Regards

Achmad