F1 help for parameters

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I was wondering like what we have in abap stack, can we get some kind of description of the database parameters within the studio itself.

Is there a alternate rather than going to help.sap.com and search for the parameter?

Message was edited by: SAP HANA Academy

[richard_bremer]

Hi there, too,

there is currently no consistent documentation of the system parameters. Some of them are defined in the database .ini files containing the default settings of the system parameters. You can find this location from the SQL Reference, with the "ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION" statement: SAP HANA Reference: ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION.

Be warned, though, that this is not official product documentation, that there might be mistakes, and most importantly that you must not make any changes to these files ever! (Sorry for shouting, but it's so important, I had to).

I'm not aware of any plans to have parameter documentation in the next few releases. On the long run, there are preparations being made for handling the system configuration not in text files any more, but in a nicer way - but I'm not aware of the concrete plans. I believe it is too early yet to talk about details or schedule.

Best,

Richard

[Former Member]

Hi Richard,

Thanks a ton for the amazing response,

I have some queries why do we so many locations for the ini files?

Also are you thinking of streamlining of the hana installation with reference to the file system structure i am getting confused with vendor specific installation.

I understand that IBM uses GPFS , HP uses something else , fujitsu uses something else.

But file system structure need not change right?

Everytime i have a hard time to figure out where the files are ?

[Former Member]

Thanks for pointing out that changes to ini text files are restricted, but richard there should be documentation for every parameter being used right , how do we know what is impact. Does that mean SAP is going to define the values or else we define a single parameter and others are decided based upon the size mentioned in the first one.

Like in windows memory management we define only single value depending on the available RAM for SAP.

[richard_bremer]

Hi there,

there are in fact not so many locations for the .ini files - there are three, of which one should not be relevant to administrators or other users (the one with the default values). The other two are there for system-wide and host-specific settings. It is rather natural to have them in different locations, at least as long as the configuration is handled in text files: it helps keeping the files simple - imagine what happens if you add a host to a scale-out system...

However, the actual file system locations of the .ini files should be mostly irrelevant to anyone, because nobody is supposed to modify these files directly on the file system - except for emergencies in which the database configuration must be modified in order to enable the system to operate at all.

For your other question: the choice of file system does not play a role for the file system layout. The hardware vendors have some liberty to choose what they consider best. In my eyes, this is a good thing.

If you would like to understand the file system structure, you may take a look at the SAP HANA Server Installation Guide which is available at http://help.sap.com/hana_platform/. In section 2.3.1, you will find the most important mount points and the directory structure underneath.

A simple tip: data and log files are easy to find, they should normally be located in /hana/data and /hana/log. All other things, i.e. the software executables and shared libraries, configuration files, trace files, default backup path, and more are placed into /hana/shared/<SID>. There is also /usr/sap/<SID> - which is mostly populated via symbolic links to subdirectories of /hana/shared/<SID>.

In addition to the system-specific files in /hana/shared/<SID>, you can find global tools such as SAP HANA Lifecycle Manager (HLM), or the SAP host agent installed directly into /usr/sap.

Best regards,

Richard

[richard_bremer]

And hi again,

it is simply a fact that there is no parameter reference there yet. And I cannot tell you whether or not this will come. I'm afraid my personal preference does not really matter much in this respect. SAP does document quite a few of the parameters. This documentation is, however, spread across the multiple parts of SAP HANA documentation (most of which I consider pretty nice). for the time being, I use an internet search engine of my personal preference to search site:help.sap.com/hana_platform/ for the parameter name if I assume that a parameter I'm interested in might be documented.

Best regards,

Richard

[Former Member]

Hi Richard,

One more doubt i have a query, suppose in oracle or db6 we can search for the error code for the respective error when we get in the sql prompt do we have something of the same sort oerr or db2 ? for db6.

[richard_bremer]

Hi p517710,

the SQL error codes are listed in the SQL reference (http://help.sap.com/hana/SAP_HANA_SQL_and_System_Views_Reference_en.pdf - or this one: SQL Error Codes - SAP HANA SQL and System Views Reference - SAP Library for the direct link to the page in the html version). The guide lists for each error code a short textual description).

In the SQL Editor of SAP HANA Studio, you can search for the error codes (simply highlight the error code and hit the F1 key). I do not always get the right result directly from the F1 search, but as the help window is already open, you can go to the search option there, enter the error code - and then I always get a link to the SQL error codes. If you click on that link, you are shown the correct record from the table of error codes.

Even quicker and independent from Studio and/or documentation is the built-in system view M_ERROR_CODES:

select code, code_string, description from m_error_codes where code='<code_number>';

Best,

Richard

[Former Member]

Thanks a ton Richard, sorry for comparing with traditional RDBMS , wanted to know what all features were still not available.

[lbreddemann]

Hi there number-account!

Currently there (purposely) exists no consolidated parameter documentation for SAP HANA.

And thus there is no build in help available in SAP HANA studio.

- Lars

[Former Member]

Hi Lars,

Finally you have responded back to my thread after a long time. You know me as well personally

I am from the old sdn network when we had registered we used to get numbered accounts.

in future is SAP planning to introduce the same ?