SAP HANA - From Relational OLAP Database to Big Data Infrastructure

SAP HANA started as one of the best-performing database engines for OLAP workloads strictly pursuing a main-memory centric architecture and exploiting hardware developments like large number of cores and main memories in the TByte range. Within this paper, we outline the steps from a traditional relational database engine to a Big Data infrastructure comprising different methods to handle data of different volume, coming in with different velocity, and showing a fairly large degree of variety. In order to make the presentation of this transformation process more tangible, we discuss two major technical topics–HANA native integration points as well as extension points for collaboration with Hadoop-based data management infrastructures. The overall of goal of this paper is to (a) review current application patterns and resulting technical challenges as well as to (b) paint the big picture for upcoming architectural designs with SAP HANA database as the core of a SAP Big Data infrastructure.