Hi, I am Denys van Kempen, from SAP Partner Engineering,
in this video tutorial series e are going to cover what’s new with SAP HANA Cloud.
In this video, we are going to take a look at system information and version numbers.
This video was recorded in April 2020.
For the latest material on this topic, please check the playlist.
OK -
I am connected here to the SAP Cloud Platform Cockpit, have selected SAP HANA cloud.
We can see we have one instance running, and to access this instance, we can select here
Open in SAP HANA Cockpit.
This will open System Overview, where we have a number of cards,
we can filter by area or,
when we select Manage cards, toggle the cards on or off
To be clear, we are looking here at the SAP HANA Cockpit, a web-based database administration
tool and the database happens to be SAP HANA cloud.
So we need to keep these things separate.
We have a tool, the cockpit, and a database.
Now, those already familiar with the SAP HANA Cockpit, will notice we are missing our Home
button.
If, we switch briefly to the SAP HANA cockpit for SAP HANA, express edition,
we can return Home and Home is were all our resources, our database
instances, are listed, in the resource directory and this is also where we can manage our landscape.
Now, for SAP HANA Cloud there is no landscape to manage.
We have a single instance, that’s it.
For the SAP HANA Service in the cloud foundry environment, the predecessor of SAP HANA Cloud,
this works the same: no home, no landscape, just system overview.
OK For version information about the tool, select
your user, and about For Cockpit, we are on release 2 SP 12 of
late March and we also get the version the database explorer and SAPUI5, the user interface.
Now, if I make the same selection on my SAP HANA Service, cloud foundry, we get the same
versions.
SAP HANA Cockpit is a cloud-based service and here, the same version is used.
For HANA express, we have a slightly older version.
SP 11 Now, I double checked Software Downloads on
the SAP ONE Support Launchpad and this is still the latest version available for on-premise
So, we can see that the cloud-based version is the very latest.
Cloud-first.
OK Now, let’s focus on the System Information
card.
Here we find the SAP HANA version listed: 4.0, some more zeros’ and then some patch
number.
Timestamp of the last update: March 31st.
The operating system: SUSE Linux 15 SP1 and installed plugins: PAL
We can select the card to open the view, System usage is set to custom.
We can change this.
It is a system parameter, we will cover this topic in a subsequent video.
The system information view here is generic, not every item applies to HANA Cloud.
Multiple host for example.
This does not apply to HANA Cloud.
The version information is a bit more specific, as the label Cloud Edition 2020.08 is included.
2020 is the year but 08 not the month, we are in March.
It is just a number.
Version history shows any updates. and installed plugin details provides all
the details of the plugin: here we only have PAL, the predictive analysis library, which
is an AFL, an application function library, which enables us to execute C++ code inside
the database.
Not everything can be expressed in SQL and SQL Script or it may just not perform good
enough, there are different reasons why you might need to use an application function.
HANA Cloud includes PAL.
Now, there is some small print on this, some limitations, and I will address this in the
blog that comes with the video, see the description on YouTube below.
If we compare HANA Cloud with the HANA Service, Cloud Foundry, and HANA express, we can see
that express runs HANA 2.0 revision 45 and the HANA Service 2.0 revision 46.
45 is the latest available revision for on-premise deployments.
Cloud-first again here for the SAP HANA service, as it is running 46, but apart from that it
is the same main 2.0 version.
HANA Cloud is 4.0 - completely different codebase - and we will cover the differences as we
go along in our series.
The operating system is listed for the HANA Service as well, but for database-as-a-service,
this is less relevant of course.
Whatever HANA runs on is transparent.
HANA express includes XSA, XS Advanced.
We do not see this listed for the HANA service and for HANA cloud.
Does that make sense.
Well, yes it should.
HANA XS is a built-in application server for native development on the SAP HANA platform.
In case of XS Advanced, the second implementation of HANA XS, it is more built-on than in, it
is basically a HANA-specific cloud foundry implementation and because the SAP Cloud Platform
already provides cloud foundry, it would not make sense to include this with the database
service.
So no XS advanced for HANA Cloud and the HANA Service.
What about the initial implementation of HANA XS, HANA classic?
Here on our express system, we can open the system monitoring view M_XS_APPLICATIONS,
and here we have the InA service, for example, so we can make connection over HTTP to an
SAP HANA information model.
The public URLs, with port 80 plus instance number for HTTP and 43 instance number for
HTTPS For the SAP HANA service, we get the same
information.
As mentioned, it still the same version as HANA on-premise.
For HANA Cloud, 4.0, this is all gone.
XS classic is no longer included.
No XS-engine embedded.
It is gone.
Here we have some other system monitoring views, by the way.
This is what populates the System Information card.
Start time, version, usage.
The SID, the system ID, is H00, that will be the same for everyone, and the database
name is also H00.
So, it is still a tenant database system with a single tenant.
We will cover this topic in the next video.
M_DATABASE_HISTORY shows any updates M_PLUGIN_MANIFEST; all the details about the
plugins. and M_HOST_INFORMATION the details about the
operating system and its configuration os_user
cpu_cores sap retrieval path - this is usually where
the system is installed /usr/sap/SID etc. and here we are on /tmp - it inside a container
OK Final remark, about the plugins,
On HANA express, we find AFL, EML, EPMMDS, and the APL
APL is the Automated Predictive Library.
This comes from Predictive Analytics.
EML is the external machine learning library, also known as Tensorflow integration, and
is similar to R-integration.
EPMMDS stands for Enterprise Performance Management Multidimensional Services, you need to this
for XS Classic InA service connections used by on-premise BI tools such as SAP Lumira
and Analysis for Microsoft Office.
SAP HANA cloud no longer includes these plugins and I will and some links with where to find
more information on this topic.
OK, one more thing.
Database explorer We can launch it from the SAP HANA Cloud instance
page on SAP Cloud Platform but also directly here from the HANA Cockpit
New feature We can select Show Overview from the context
menu and this will also list general system information, together with some graphs for
used memory, and disk usage.
Of course, we still also have our statement library
We can run database information We have already seen this view.
There are a lot of scripts Let’s filter on overview
Hosts overview - that could be a nice one - and so on
Go explore, and have fun.
So much for the system information card and version numbers.
Thanks for watching