What is HANA database? In-Memory Computing

SAP HANA is SAP AG’s implementation of in-memory database technology. There are four components within the software group:

• SAP HANA DB (or HANA DB) refers to the database technology itself,
• SAP HANA Studio refers to the suite of tools provided by SAP for modeling,
• SAP HANA Appliance refers to HANA DB as delivered on partner certified hardware (see below) as an appliance. It also includes the modeling tools from HANA Studio as well as replication and data transformation tools to move data into HANA DB,
• SAP HANA Application Cloud refers to the cloud based infrastructure for delivery of applications (typically existing SAP applications rewritten to run on HANA).

HANA DB takes advantage of the low cost of main memory (RAM), data processing abilities of multi-core processors and the fast data access of solid-state drives relative to traditional hard drives to deliver better performance of analytical and transactional applications. It offers a multi-engine query processing environment which allows it to support both relational data (with both row- and column-oriented physical representations in a hybrid engine) as well as graph and text processing for semi- and unstructured data management within the same system. HANA DB is 100% ACID compliant.

While HANA has been called variously an acronym for HAsso's New Architecture (a reference to SAP founder Hasso Plattner) andHigh Performance ANalytic Appliance, HANA is a name not an acronym.

Developer(s)	SAP AG
Stable release	SAP HANA 1.0 SP4 / May 4, 2012; 7 months ago
Development status	Active
Written in	C, C++
Available in	Multi-lingual
Type	In-memory RDBMS
License	Proprietary
Website	www.saphana.com

SAP still offers other database products:.

• MaxDB
• Sybase IQ
• Sybase ASE
• SQL Anywhere

As a database agnostic company, SAP also resells databases from vendors such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft to sit under their ERP Business Suite.

• In-memory database management systems

• Kognitio Analytical Platform (Kognitio)
• SolidDB (IBM)
• Times Ten (Oracle)
• Terracotta BigMemory (Software AG)
• Manifact (Manifact)