Preface

SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytical Appliance) is an in-memory, column store database that supports real-time data loads and analytics. As the name conveys, SAP HANA is an appliance combining hardware and software. SAP has been providing business applications for different domains for many years. Now, it has come up with a game-changing database platform that helps a business to run faster and analyze decision-making in real time, thus helping users to analyze data within seconds.

In SAP HANA, both analytical and transactional data is stored. Along with this, analysis of the data combination is possible on-the-fly. SAP HANA unleashes the potential to analyze Big Data in real time, which includes structured and unstructured data. SAP HANA also supports data warehousing in which existing SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP BW) models to SAP HANA and makes decisions on top of this. SAP HANA also possesses libraries that support predictive, spatial, and textual analysis, which can be run on multiple data sources.