Hi, my name is Denys van Kempen, SAP HANA Academy. You are watching a video tutorial that is part
of a series about the SAP Business Technology Platform certification
SAP Certified Technology Associate - SAP HANA Cloud Provisioning and Administration.
This tutorial covers the topic area SAP HANA Database Explorer for SAP HANA Cloud
This video was recorded in August 2022.
For the latest tutorials on the topic, please check the playlist.
As a reminder, here we have the topic areas
SAP HANA database explorer for SAP HANA Cloud has a 9% weight, about 8 questions,
and this includes questions about working with the database explorer,
the statement library, import, export, and files.
Just like the SAP HANA cockpit for SAP HANA Cloud, the database explorer is pretty much the same tool
as the tool used for the SAP HANA platform on-premises,
with some minor differences, the details are beyond the scope of the exam
There are many ways how we can launch, how we can access, the database explorer.
As with the cockpit, we can access the database explorer from the card,
from the tile, on the SAP BTP Cockpit, SAP HANA Cloud view, menu.
There are two entries
Open in SAP HANA Database Explorer to develop and administer.
Open SQL Console in SAP HANA Database Explorer
This opens the same tool, just with a different view.
Here we have the explorer in browse catalog mode
and when we select Open SQL Console, with keyboard shortcut for your convenience, a SQL Console opens
where you can enter your SQL statements
that’s the only difference.
Going back to the BTP Cockpit,
Again, as with the HANA Cockpit, we can also first launch the SAP HANA Cloud Central tool,
used to create and manage HANA Cloud database and data lake instances, and then in the action
menu, the elipsis, we find the same two items.
Then if we switch to the HANA Cockpit, we find a link to the Database Explorer in the Database
Administration card on the Database Overview app, the icon with the arrow indicates that
we are opening a new browser tab or window, to access the explorer.
and there are quite a few, as you can see
for example, in the Smart Data Integration card, data provisioning agents, this opens the
database explorer with the agents selected in the catalog. No agents are connected,
so there is no data available, but this is just to show you how this works.
Same for View trace and diagnostic files on the Alerting and Diagnostics card,
this opens the explorer with the Database Diagnostics Files folder selected
We will get back to this
OK, to resume, there are many ways how we can access the database explorer
the tool combines a number of functionalities,
we have a catalog listing all database objects
a SQL Console to execute SQL statements,
we can access files, diagnostic files, trace files
and we can also access HDI containers
HDI, HANA Deployment Infrastructure, enables us to move database objects more secure
and programatically between different environments: development, test, production.
It is a more sophisticated approach
when compared with using SQL scripts to create the database objects.
The developer creates design time artifacts uisng a tool like the SAP Business Application Studio,
for example, and then build and deploy the artifacts as runtime objects in the database.
Those objects are created, conceptually, inside a container, owned by a technical
user. It is a database schema, but totally isolated, hence the notion of container,
not to be confused with Docker, Kubernetes, and so on, as it is not related. Just schemas.
The details are beyond the scope of the exam,
and on a side note, there is also an HDI
Administration app available on the SAP HANA cockpit for SAP HANA Cloud
and here we can see containers and container groups,
users and roles, privileges (note the SYSTEM and SYS users)
and as explained in the previous video, should you want to learn more,
you can always access the online help
with a full explanation of the topic,
recommended reading, but as mentioned, not in the scope for the exam.
Back to the explorer
with the plus icon, we can add instances to the explorer
the database associated with the cockpit is listed (note that is listed as tenant database)
we can add HDI containers, which adds a connection to the same database
but as the container schema owner.
We can add regular HANA databases,
the data lake relational engine, powerd by IQ,
or data lake files
you can hover over the current database connection for details: note that the database SID,
system identifier is H00
the catalog shows database objects,
common ones like tables
views
note that there is a filter on the currently connected schema
You can filter on the schema
here we have the ABSTRACT_SQL_PLANS view, for example
selecting it, opens the definition
to view data, click the button Open Data
just performs a SELECT * on the view
You can right-click the view for a context menu,
open data, delete, find dependencies, export data, generate CREATE statements, and so on
we have triggers, synonyms, sequences, schemas
some objects are specific to HANA
agent, agent groups, and adapters, for smart data access and integration,
same for remote sources, and remote subscriptions
JSON collections, in case we would have enabled the document store for HANA Cloud
Graph workspaces for HANA Graph, and so on
There is a context menu for the database as well
show overview
with general information
and memory, cpu, and disk usage statistics
there is statement library
which comes prepopulated with a number of SQL Scripts
which you can directly execute or open in the SQL Console
maybe tweak the statement a bit
and run
there are a few run options, by the way,
run in the backgroud for long running statements,
these options are more for the developer persona
same for the Analyze menu here
generate plan file, report code coverage
and there is even a debugger integrated with the database explorer,
but as administrator we are not likely to use this much
back to the statement library
you can export the statements, in some formats
or upload statements,
adding your own SQL scripts to the library
then we have some import and export options
we can import the catalog objects, the data, and HDI containers
we can import objects from a local computer,
from Amazon S3, Azure Storage, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, or data lake files
with some options how to handle the import
import data opens a wizard, a dialog
for HANA Cloud spatial, we can import ESRI Shapefiles, a topic out of scope forthe exam
As with the objects, we can select the source (you have seen this twice now, say no more),
local only support CSV, comma separated values, although the delimiter maybe different
Cloud storage provides some more options
and supports besides CSV, also Parquet and JSON as file format.
Parquet is open source, Apache project, used with Hadoop, provides efficient data compression
JSON, Java Script Option Notation, used a lot with NoSQL databases, for example
with some options to configure the input
one more thing, as promised, the database diagnostic files
the folder name is the same as the host name of your HANA Cloud instance
the folders underneath represent the services, we discussed in another tutorial
when covering the HANA cockpit
some folders may be empty
sqltrace you would need to activate first
we can see the backup.log file
which you can download
the backint file, backups are automatically transferred to some external backup storage
for the indexserver, the database engine for the HANA Cloud tenant database,
there is an audit file, alert file, loads, unloads, consistency checks,
and some more, but mostly of interest for SAP Support, this is not easy reading
and that’s it
don’t forget to take a look at the documentation for more information.
Getting Started With the SAP HANA Database Explorer
for a more detailed coverage of the topic
You can find the links to the resources mentioned in the description of this video below.
This video tutorial was recorded by Denys van Kempen, SAP HANA Academy.
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