SAP SAP HANA Syllabus

What is a SAP HANA SID and instance number?

The SID is a unique 3-character System ID (e.g., HDB) identifying the HANA system; the instance number is a two-digit number (00-97) that determines port ranges (e.g., ports 3<instance>xx).

What is the default port pattern for the SAP HANA index server SQL interface?

Port $3\langle instance\rangle15$ for single-container systems; for multitenant (MDC) tenant databases, the SQL port is typically $3\langle instance\rangle40$ and above (assigned per tenant).

During SAP HANA installation, what is the <sid>adm user?

The operating-system-level administrative user automatically created for the instance (named as the lowercase SID plus 'adm', e.g., hdbadm) that owns and runs all HANA processes.

What is the SYSTEM user in SAP HANA?

The initial database superuser created at installation with full privileges; SAP best practice is to create individual admin users and deactivate/lock SYSTEM for normal operation.

What is SAP HANA Multitenant Database Containers (MDC)?

An architecture where a single HANA system hosts multiple isolated tenant databases sharing the same installation, memory, and resources, each with its own data, users, and catalog, managed via a SystemDB.

In an MDC system, what is the SystemDB used for?

The SystemDB is the central system database used for administration of the whole system: creating/dropping tenant databases, monitoring, and managing system-wide configuration; it holds no application data.

Where are most SAP HANA system configuration parameters stored?

In INI configuration files (e.g., global.ini, indexserver.ini, nameserver.ini) organized into sections and key-value parameters, editable via SQL (ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION) or HANA Studio/Cockpit.

What are the configuration 'layers' in SAP HANA and their precedence?

DEFAULT (shipped defaults), SYSTEM (system-wide overrides), DATABASE (tenant-specific), and HOST (host-specific). More specific layers override more general ones, with HOST/DATABASE taking precedence over SYSTEM over DEFAULT.

What SQL statement changes a HANA configuration parameter for the whole system?

ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION ('indexserver.ini','SYSTEM') SET ('section','parameter') = 'value' WITH RECONFIGURE;

What is an Attribute View in SAP HANA classic modeling?

A reusable view that models master data / dimensions by joining tables and defining attributes (e.g., product, customer), used as a building block for analytic and calculation views.

What is an Analytic View in SAP HANA?

A multidimensional (star-schema) view combining a central fact table (with measures) and attribute views (dimensions), executed by the OLAP engine for aggregation and reporting.

What is a Calculation View in SAP HANA and why is it now preferred?

A flexible, powerful view built from graphical or scripted nodes (joins, unions, aggregations, projections) that can combine other views; it is the recommended single modeling artifact in modern HANA, replacing deprecated attribute/analytic views.

What is the difference between a Dimension-type and a Cube-type calculation view?

A DIMENSION calculation view returns attributes (master data, no default aggregation), while a CUBE calculation view exposes measures with aggregation (optionally with a star join) for analytical consumption.

What are 'measures' versus 'attributes' in SAP HANA modeling?

Attributes are descriptive/categorical fields used for grouping and filtering (dimensions); measures are numeric, aggregatable values (e.g., sales amount) that are summed, averaged, etc.

What is a calculated column in SAP HANA views?

A column whose value is derived at runtime from an expression or formula over other columns (e.g., $\text{Profit} = \text{Revenue} - \text{Cost}$), rather than stored physically.

What is a restricted column (restricted measure) in SAP HANA?

A measure that is filtered/restricted to a subset of values of one or more attributes (e.g., 'Sales for region = EU only'), computed without needing a separate calculated column.

What is an input parameter versus a variable in SAP HANA calculation views?

A variable filters data on an attribute at query runtime (adds a WHERE condition on results); an input parameter passes a value into the view's calculation logic (e.g., into a formula or currency conversion) and does not directly filter output rows.

What is the SAP HANA Calculation Engine's key optimization principle for pushing operations down?

Query pruning / operation push-down: filters, projections, and aggregations are pushed as close as possible to the data source (lower nodes), reducing the intermediate result set that flows up the model.

What is the main cause of poor calculation view performance related to aggregation, and how is it avoided?

Late aggregation forces large intermediate results up the model; performance improves by aggregating early (pushing GROUP BY down), avoiding unnecessary columns, and enabling 'Keep Flag' / correct join cardinalities so joins are pruned when columns aren't requested.

What does the EXPLAIN PLAN / Visualize Plan tool show in SAP HANA?

It shows how the SQL optimizer will execute a query — the operators, join order, engines used, and estimated row counts — helping identify expensive steps and optimization opportunities.

What is the SAP HANA Plan Visualizer (PlanViz)?

A graphical performance-analysis tool that shows the actual executed plan of a query with timing and row counts per operator, used to pinpoint bottlenecks in models and SQL.

What is table partitioning in SAP HANA and why is it used?

Splitting a large table into smaller partitions (by hash, range, or round-robin) to overcome the ~2 billion row limit per table/partition, enable parallel processing, distribute data across nodes, and improve load/query performance.

What is the maximum number of rows per column-store table partition in SAP HANA?

Approximately 2 billion rows ($2^{31}-1$) per partition, which is why partitioning is required for very large tables.

Name the main partitioning types available in SAP HANA.

Single-level: Hash, Range, and Round-Robin; plus Multi-level (e.g., Hash-Range) partitioning that combines two criteria for finer distribution and pruning.

What views does SAP HANA provide for system monitoring, and what prefix identifies them?

System views with the M_ prefix (monitoring, e.g., M_CS_TABLES, M_SERVICE_MEMORY, M_HEAP_MEMORY) and metadata views in the SYS schema; they expose real-time runtime statistics.

What is the SAP HANA Cockpit?

A web-based administration and monitoring tool (SAPUI5) for managing one or many HANA databases: monitoring health/performance/memory, managing users, security, backups, and configuration, replacing many HANA Studio admin functions.

What does the M_SERVICE_MEMORY monitoring view report?

The memory consumption of each HANA service (e.g., indexserver), including used/allocated memory, heap and shared memory, helping track overall memory usage against the licensed/physical limit.

What is the Global Allocation Limit in SAP HANA memory management?

The maximum amount of memory HANA is allowed to allocate on a host (by default ~90% of the first 64 GB plus 97% of RAM above that, or set by license/parameter); reaching it triggers memory reclamation or out-of-memory errors.

What is the difference between 'used memory' and 'resident memory' in SAP HANA?

Used memory is the total memory HANA has allocated for its data, code, and system tables (the true footprint); resident memory is the physical RAM currently occupied by the process as seen by the OS (may include unreleased free memory).

How is the SAP HANA privilege model structured?

Privileges are granted to users/roles in categories: System privileges (admin tasks), Object privileges (SQL on tables/views/procedures), Analytic privileges (row-level data access in models), Package privileges (repository), and Application privileges (XS apps).

What are analytic privileges in SAP HANA and what do they control?

They provide row-level (data-level) access control on modeled views, restricting which rows a user can see based on attribute values (e.g., a sales manager sees only their region), rather than object-level access.

What is the difference between a catalog role and a repository (design-time) role in SAP HANA?

A catalog role is created via SQL (CREATE ROLE) and managed at runtime by users with grant rights; a repository role is a design-time object, transportable and version-controlled, granted only by the technical user _SYS_REPO.

What data-at-rest encryption features does SAP HANA provide?

Data volume encryption, redo log encryption, and backup encryption using AES-256, with a secure store (SSFS) protecting the encryption root keys.

What is the SAP HANA Secure User Store (hdbuserstore)?

A local, encrypted store of connection details (host, port, user, password) under a key alias, allowing tools/scripts to connect without exposing credentials in clear text.

What is an authentication method commonly used for single sign-on in SAP HANA?

Kerberos (via SPNEGO for web/SSO), SAML assertions for BI/analytical clients, and X.509 certificates, in addition to basic user/password authentication.

What is the difference between a database backup and a log backup in SAP HANA?

A data (complete/delta) backup saves a point-in-time snapshot of the data area; log backups continuously save filled redo log segments, enabling point-in-time recovery when combined with a data backup.

What backup types does SAP HANA support?

Complete data backup, Differential backup (changes since last complete), Incremental backup (changes since last complete/incremental), Log backups, and storage snapshots.

What is SAP HANA System Replication used for?

High availability and disaster recovery: it continuously replicates data from a primary system to one or more secondary systems (via log shipping), allowing fast takeover if the primary fails.

Name the three data pre-load / operation modes of SAP HANA System Replication for the secondary.

'No preload' (delta_datashipping — data on disk only), 'preload column tables into memory' (logreplay), and the operation modes delta_datashipping, logreplay, and logreplay_readaccess (the last allows read access on the secondary).

What is the difference between SAP HANA System Replication and Storage Replication?

System Replication is HANA-native, database-aware log shipping (can preload data into secondary memory for fast takeover); Storage Replication mirrors disk volumes at the storage layer, is database-agnostic, and has no in-memory preload.

What SQL-based procedural language does SAP HANA provide for stored logic?

SQLScript, an extension of SQL supporting imperative logic, table variables, and declarative data-flow using scalar/table-valued functions and procedures, enabling code push-down to the database.

What is 'code push-down' in SAP HANA development?

The design principle of moving data-intensive computation from the application layer into the HANA database (via SQLScript, CDS, calculation views) so processing happens where the data lives, minimizing data transfer.

What is Core Data Services (CDS) in SAP HANA?

A declarative, design-time data modeling infrastructure to define database artifacts (entities/tables, views, associations) using DDL-like syntax (HDBDD/.hdbcds), enabling semantically rich, transportable data models.

What is the difference between a table function and a scalar function in SAPScript?

A table function returns a tabular result set (multiple rows/columns) and can be used in a FROM clause; a scalar function returns a single value and is used in expressions like calculated columns.

What is the SAP Web IDE / SAP Business Application Studio used for with HANA?

Browser-based development environments for building HANA native (XSA/HDI) applications: creating CDS models, calculation views, SQLScript procedures, and full-stack apps, with Git integration and deployment to HDI containers.

What is an HDI (HANA Deployment Infrastructure) container?

A schema-isolated, self-contained deployment target for design-time database artifacts in XS Advanced; it enables container-based development, dependency management, and clean deploy/undeploy of HANA objects.

What is the SAP HANA smart data access (SDA) feature?

A data virtualization capability that lets HANA access remote data sources (other databases, Hadoop, etc.) as virtual tables in real time, without physically replicating the data into HANA.

What is Smart Data Integration (SDI) in SAP HANA?

A framework for bulk/real-time data provisioning and transformation into HANA using adapters and the Data Provisioning Agent, supporting both batch replication and change-data-capture (real-time) with in-flight transformations (flowgraphs).

What is the difference between Smart Data Access (SDA) and Smart Data Integration (SDI)?

SDA is virtualization (data stays remote, queried on demand); SDI physically moves/replicates data into HANA (batch or real-time) and can transform it. SDI also offers more adapters and real-time replication.

What is SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT) Replication Server?

A trigger-based, real-time data replication tool that replicates data from SAP and non-SAP source systems into HANA, capturing changes via database triggers in the source for near-real-time updates.

What is the SAP HANA Predictive Analysis Library (PAL)?

A built-in Application Function Library (AFL) of pre-built machine-learning and statistical algorithms (classification, regression, clustering, time series, association) executed directly inside HANA via SQLScript for in-database predictive analytics.

Name three categories of algorithms provided by the SAP HANA PAL.

Classification (e.g., decision trees, logistic regression, KNN), Clustering (e.g., K-means, DBSCAN), and Time-Series/Regression (e.g., ARIMA, exponential smoothing, linear regression); also association analysis (Apriori).

What is the objective function minimized by the K-Means clustering algorithm available in HANA PAL?

The within-cluster sum of squared distances: $J = \sum_{i=1}^{k}\sum_{x \in C_i} \lVert x - \mu_i \rVert^{2}$, where $\mu_i$ is the centroid of cluster $C_i$.

What is the SAP HANA Business Function Library (BFL)?

An Application Function Library containing pre-built financial and business functions (e.g., depreciation, cash-flow, moving average) callable from SQLScript for in-database business computations.

What is the Automated Predictive Library (APL) in SAP HANA?

An AFL exposing SAP's automated machine-learning engine (from the former KXEN/Infinite Insight) that auto-builds and tunes predictive models (classification, regression, clustering, time series, recommendation) with minimal data-science expertise.

How does SAP HANA integrate with Hadoop/Big Data ecosystems?

Via Smart Data Access (virtual tables over Hive/Spark), HANA Spark Controller, HANA Vora / Data Lake, and by federating queries across HANA in-memory data and cold data stored in Hadoop/HDFS or object storage.

What is the SAP HANA data tiering / temperature concept (hot, warm, cold)?

A strategy to place data by access frequency: hot data in memory (fast, costly), warm data on disk-optimized stores like Native Storage Extension or Extension Nodes, and cold data in cheaper external stores (Data Lake/Hadoop), balancing cost and performance.

What is SAP HANA Native Storage Extension (NSE)?

A built-in warm-data tier that keeps less-frequently-accessed column-store data on disk with a buffer cache, reducing memory footprint while keeping the data in the same HANA database and queryable transparently.

What is SAP HANA Dynamic Tiering?

An integrated but separately licensed disk-based columnar store (Extended Store) for managing warm data, offloading large, infrequently accessed tables from main memory to a disk-based engine within the same HANA system.

How is SAP HANA used in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios?

It ingests and stores high-volume, high-velocity sensor/streaming data, and with Smart Data Streaming / streaming analytics processes events in real time, then applies PAL predictive models for anomaly detection and predictive maintenance.

What was SAP HANA Smart Data Streaming (SDS) used for in IoT?

A complex event processing (CEP) engine that continuously analyzes streams of incoming events (e.g., sensor data) in real time using continuous queries, filtering, aggregating, and triggering actions before or as data lands in HANA.

What is the SAP HANA spatial engine and its relevance to IoT/geospatial data?

A built-in engine supporting spatial (geographic) data types and functions per the OGC standard (points, polygons, distance, intersection), enabling location-based analytics for IoT, logistics, and mapping directly in HANA.

What graph capability does SAP HANA provide?

A native Graph engine that stores and processes graph data (vertices and edges) with algorithms like shortest path, neighborhood search, and pattern matching (via GraphScript/openCypher-like queries) for network and relationship analysis.

What is the relationship between SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA?

S/4HANA is SAP's next-generation ERP business suite built to run exclusively on the SAP HANA database, leveraging HANA's in-memory speed for a simplified data model and real-time transactional + analytical processing.

What is the difference between OLTP and OLAP, and how does SAP HANA relate to both?

OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) handles many short read/write transactions; OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) handles complex analytical queries over large data. SAP HANA unifies both (HTAP) in one system, eliminating the need for separate transactional and analytical databases.

What does HTAP stand for and how does SAP HANA deliver it?

Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing — running analytics on live transactional data in a single database. HANA delivers it through its in-memory column store, which is fast enough for both transactional writes and real-time analytical reads without a separate data warehouse.