SAP HANA

This past week I was introduced to a new database management system (DBMS) called SAP Hana. For many years, database architecture has been stagnant. There has always been a computer with a hard drive disk inside that talks to a user’s computer (memory and CPU) to produce information. SAP has decided that this somewhat simple and straightforward architecture and make it even simpler and even faster. SAP decided to design a database using only physical ram - a computer’s memory. This allows for the database to respond much quicker. This approach completely cuts out using a disk and leaves the entire database, including its data, all in the computer’s memory.

 
One of the primary uses of Hana is for business analytics and reporting. With the traditional database approach, business reporting systems were often times relying on data extracted from production systems. Since these databases relied on data stored or sent to hard discs, the data that was being analyzed was often weeks or months old - primarily due to the amount of resources needed in order to support the extraction process. With Hana, the data is stored on ram which makes it quicker and there isn’t a lengthy process to get the data from a production system to the database. This is allowing businesses to report in real or near real time.

 
Many business that have already implemented Hana have reported report generation times being more than 10,000X quicker than before. This translates into a huge factor for businesses. They now have the ability to see data based on more up-to-date information or to see the same report being generated on a more regular basis. This system also allows the previously used resources to be utilized in a new ways allowing for even more analysis.

 
SAP Hana has already proved that the next generation database is here and is proving to dramatically change the speed and performance of current DBMS.

-SMF