Database

TDWI Breakfast Briefing Series: Actionable Solutions for Big Data and Algorithmic Analysis

Charlotte Han — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 21:22:48 GMT

@Computerworld tech experts and enthusiasts state that large enterprise data volume will increase by 60% in 2013. Learn how to leverage this real-time data as SAP partners with TDWI at the “Insight at Light Speed: A Vision for Seamless Provision of Real-Time Information” thought leadership series.

Join us for six briefings packed with actionable solutions for big data and algorithmic analysis. You can enjoy a complimentary hot buffet breakfast with peers as we explore information delivery to your employees and customers, in real time.

You will learn about:

Historical aspects of data warehousing that have bifurcated the information environment
The growing community of business intelligence and analytics users
How big data and algorithmic analysis are changing the game
How to eliminate data fragmentation
Delivering real-time data that is synchronized and consistent
Leveraging in-memory computing and high-performance analytical architectures
Instituting the right amount of data governance

Take a peak to view details in a city near you!

Locations:

4/2 – San Francisco, CA

4/4 – New York City, NY

4/9 – Washington DC

4/17 – Chicago, IL

4/18 – Toronto, ON
4/23 – Raleigh, NC

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @SAPNorthAmerica for updates around the event!

Webcast: Take your Architecture Efforts to the Next Level with SAP Sybase PowerDesigner

Charlotte Han — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 23:16:52 GMT

Are You Ready to Take Your Architecture Efforts to the Next Level?

Join us on March 26, 2013, for a Webcast on the features and benefits of SAP Sybase PowerDesigner

Register Now

SAP Sybase PowerDesigner software can help you eliminate information silos and understand the impact of change before it happens. This powerful modeling tool for data, information, and enterprise architecture offers stakeholders access to key information assets to enhance business agility through better communication and data governance.

Please join us on Tuesday, March 26, 2013, for a presentation and demonstration of the most recent release of SAP Sybase PowerDesigner. During the Webcast, Matt Creason, director of Global Enterprise Information Management and Architecture at SAP, and David Dichmann, product manager at SAP, will explore:

New what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) reporting that makes using SAP Sybase PowerDesigner intuitive and easy
A new Extensible Markup Language (XML) generic import for getting metadata anywhere, anytime
Updated XML modeling for improved messaging and message format definitions
New workflow change management for better team collaboration
Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) XML import/export for business process model exchange, including support for SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management (SAP NetWeaver BPM)
Direct integration with SAP HANA repository to improve easier deployment of your SAP HANA platform and include SAP HANA as part of your enterprise landscape
Using SAP BusinessObjects BW Universe Builder to support accurate analytics initiatives

Webcast: Take your Architecture Efforts to the next level with SAP Sybase PowerDesigner

Date:
March 26, 2013

Time:
1:00 p.m. EDT

Speakers:
Matt Creason
Director, Global Enterprise Information Management and Architecture
SAP

David Dichmann
Product Manager
SAP

Register Now

Database Talk at TDWI in Las Vegas

Dorothea Sieber — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 04:01:43 GMT

Did you know SAP attended the TDWI conference last week, Thursday 18th to 20th? And that the new release of Sybase IQ was launched throughout the event? I want to travel back in time with you today and show you some impressions from the show floor.

The show started for us with the BI Executive reception on Monday evening. We had a table set up to show the concept behind SAP's database strategy, how Sybase IQ and HANA play together and what people can expect with the new release of Sybase IQ.

On the first official day of the conference, there was a lot of booth traffic from people walking by and listening to our sessions. The HANA pod and presentation was full with many interested attendees. The HANA Academy.

One of the highlights for me was an executive speaking panel, lead by Philip Russom. The key question was: How do I select the right technology to fit my company's data strategy? Dan Lahl from SAP highlighted several customer use-cases, which helped to understand the issues customers really want to solve as part of their data strategy.

Top Tweets from the panel:

@eric_kavanagh: Dan Lahl, SAP » Could #HANA change the way companies manage data? Well, yes! @SAP http://t.co/0FZ7gHfrCB #SybaseIQ
@BIReporting: SAP Sybase IQ 16 Helps Enterprises Reveal Big Data Insights #BI http://t.co/7qmQMwH1Cw
@sDataManagement: @BILeadership: @SybaseIQ pushing "Real-time Data Platform" that combines DBMS assets of Sybase and SAP. One platform, multiple capabilities. @jcjaks @TDWI
@BigDataGeeks: SAP goes extreme in Big Data Insights - SAP Sybase IQ 16 Delivers Unprecedented Power & Insight at the Rt. Price http://t.co/QiMBVyDP #TDWI
@prussom: Up next at #TDWI = panel of vendor reps from @IBM, @SAP, @Teradata & @Vitra talkin bout fitting tech to data strategy.

In addition, I was lucky to catch David Parker, Vice President for Database & Technology at SAP, in front of the camera. He did a great job explaining what's new with Sybase IQ.

As a little extra, we gave away Sybase IQ hats to conference attendees.

Bill Rojas and Philip On from the Information Management Team explained Information Steward to attendees in a very comprehensive way. It is a key tool to clean-up data within a company and improve its quality. It is a great tool and I had fun learning more about it while listening to demos.

If you want to know more about the new Sybase release, read the official press release.

For news related to database & technology innovation, follow @SAPDataTech.

App to Data or Data to App: Rise of the Data Platform

Siva Darivemula — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:11:21 GMT

I went to a Hadoop Users Group meeting in the Valley recently and got into a long and interesting discussion with a Hadoop contributor about what it means to be an enterprise app developer (at least from a big picture perspective) with the rapid growth of Big Data, and widespread adoption of Cloud Computing and other technology trends. One of the things we spent quite a bit of time on is discussing the implications of "moving app to the data" vs "moving data to the app" as defined by the current enterprise software development paradigms.

Our discussion got me thinking about what a data application platform is and the current state. Since SAP announced the availability of its Flagship Business Suite on HANA couple of weeks ago, I've been doing some research and hope to share my learnings and thoughts via a series of blogs on the data platform topic in the coming days/weeks.

For starters:

Rapid development and adoption of Hadoop-based solution ecosystem is enabling this "app-to-data" transition. See attached image below from The Register. Hadoop has come long way in 6 years from an Apache project to an enterprise-scale Big Data solution.
This new development paradigm will finally break the data processing bottlenecks in a typical enterprise by freeing app developers to develop many "micro" apps that process/present data in various ways with direct access to data. Think iphone apps vs traditional, menu/navigation driven enterprise apps!
Convergence of Cloud, Big Data, Mobility trends with rise of "hacking" development culture will lead to many new types of apps, frameworks, and a lot of rip-and-replacing of apps (esp. in the early stages when software doesn't work as expected and since licensing costs for these new pieces of software is low-to-zero). H/T to Krishnan Subramaniam for his excellent insights on this convergence of these trends. Image below are screengrabs from his slideshare presentation.
Implementing and Developing Hadoop-based applications requires an understanding of Java, using Javascript, knowledge of MapReduce, etc. putting it beyond the capabilities of a typical data scientist/programmer. However, there are companies such as Continuuity and other major vendors that are developing integrated dev tools and packages that reduce the complexity. These are still in early stages but the general trend is very encouraging.
Thanks to the sharing culture, there are many great examples of building enterprise-scale apps and data marts using Hadoop.

Top 5 Database Platforms - the Developer Experience Exposed.

John Appleby — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 06:15:34 GMT

I was pinged lately by someone bemoaning the state of SAP HANA developer tools and I was slightly surprised. I thought that SAP had done a fairly good job of making things available, but then I am a SAP partner, with paid access to downloads, test/demo licenses and support.

[edit 01/27/13]: This page has got a lot of foot traffic so I thought it good to clarify what this comparison is about.

Developers, startups and small companies make a choice of what database platform to use. Students and new talent in the market make the same choice. Sometimes that choice is made because of what people know, what's cool and trending, or what's open-source, what's cheap, or what's "expensive and enterprise class" - Jeff Bezos famously cited this as the reason why he chose Oracle for Amazon.com. There are a bunch of reasons that determine DB platform choice.

However, I believe that a lot of the time, people choose what is easy to access and so it's my belief that if SAP wants to be a DB Platform giant (and they do), they have to lead the way in developer experience. This comparison, and grading, is all about how easy it is to get started and develop your first app. It's about ecosystem latency.

So I chose what I believed to be the 5 (yeah it turned out to be 7 because of scope creep...) major database platform choices, and I scored them based on:

- Ease of finding the developer resource pages via Google

- Ease of getting signed up as a developer

- Ease of getting the the development platform up and running

I gave extra points for organizations that give flexibility and choice, and I dock points for:

- Needing to deal with a sales team to get access

- Needing to wait for approval to get access

- Bad user experience

Now you know how I'm judging them - let's get on with the analysis!

Microsoft

I googled "Microsoft SQL Server developer" to see what was available. Microsoft have had an amazing developer program since the 90s and I remember being a part of it during university. First link on Google is the Microsoft SQL Server Dev Center. Less than 60 seconds later I have a 64-bit version of Microsoft SQL Server Express downloading - without even a click-through license! This happens when you come to install it.

Whilst it's downloading, Microsoft displayed a 5-step getting started process with links to training content, assistance, Twitter and forums. I'm already pretty impressed - Microsoft have made it simple and easy to access their developer platform.

And I look to the right of the page - they also have a link to a 90 day free trial of their Azure SQL Cloud Platform. It's got some limitations - 35Gb of data, for example - but that's pretty cool. I looked into the pricing model and got very confused. Amazon clearly do a much better job than Microsoft at pricing.

If on-premise enterprise databases are your bag, Microsoft do a free 180-day trial of their full-fat Microsoft SQL Server 2012 platform. Also downloading within 60 seconds without a click-through. It's worth noting that you do need a free 180-day trial of the Windows 2012 operating system and a minimum of 4GB RAM. This is made available either as a full download, or a virtual image.

Once downloaded, Microsoft are masters of the developer experience. Installing software and tools is straightforward and the tools are a pleasure to use. There's no question - for on-premise software, Microsoft are the guys to beat.

[edit 01/27/13]: I reviewed Microsoft first, and having slept on this post, I realized that whilst Microsoft do make it easy to get their software, they haven't really innovated on open-ness. There are, however, a good collection of AWS packages for Microsoft Windows/SQL Server. IBM do a much better job of making the information easy to find.

Grade: B-. Microsoft have enabled me, got me up and running with their software quickly and I'm already developing on their platform.

Oracle

I don't have such high expectations of Oracle: they have always been tougher with intellectual property. Maybe they have improved in recent years - let's find out. First impressions look great, there is a landing page for downloading the Oracle 11g software. You have to craft your Google search carefully, because googling "Oracle trial" lets you know just how litigious the company is!

Once you agree to the license agreement and click on a download, it then forwards you to a login page. A few minutes later and some fiddling around with bad support for the Safari browser, I'm busy downloading Oracle 11g. You can run this on the Microsoft trial version of Windows if you like, or you could run it on some variant of UNIX or Linux. The choice is yours.

The installer for Oracle isn't quite as friendly as Microsoft and the developer tools are not as polished. It's clear to me that becoming an Oracle developer is a more serious undertaking than in Microsoft. But then according to Indeed, Oracle guys are paid on average 10% more than Microsoft guys. Still, there's definitely a bit of a sense that Oracle haven't moved this stuff forward in the way that Microsoft have, especially when it comes to virtual images, and the cloud.

I also hear that Oracle have an in-memory database called TimesTen. It turns out that there is a download page for that too. Since I now have a login, it takes me 20 seconds to get this on its way down. I'm really impressed by the TimesTen hardware requirements: there is a 32-bit download if you need it (limited to a 2GB database, obviously) and on the 64-bit edition, it's just a question of how much RAM you have. Fair enough.

Grade: C. Oracle don't have the impressive platform that Microsoft have, but if you're a serious developer, that might be acceptable.

Salesforce.com

I bet you didn't expect me to go here. I'm immediately impressed: they have the domain developer.force.com which is a starting point for all development stuff. I see "Free Developer Edition" and click on it hungrily. It's a short web form with a confirmation email, and I'm in, in 60 seconds.

This is where I get the shock of my life: I blink, and 60 seconds later, I have written my first app. I barely even saw myself do it, and it gives me a guided tutorial of what I built. I'm not in the mood to take this too much further but I can see there are means to write code, develop database apps and create reports and dashboards. It's all frighteningly easy. It is no wonder that there are so many Force.com developers.

[edit 01/27/13]: Amigo Chen, see comment below, suggested that I actually review database.com - In fact I did, I just got my terminology wrong. Salesforce.com is the company, force.com is the platform and database.com is the database. That's what we're talking about here.

[edit 01/27/13]: This post got a lot of love from the Salesforce.com community, including Benioff. Let's be clear - SFDC has the best developer experience. Does it have the best app platform? I'm not so sure, and that's not what this article is about.

SAPs site: "Grade: A+. Developing an app with a cloud-based platform within 60 seconds. This is the bar to aspire to."scn.sap.com/community/data…
— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) January 27, 2013

Grade: A+. Developing an app with a cloud-based platform within 60 seconds. This is the bar to aspire to.

Workday

In for a penny, in for a pound. Workday's Developer Network (WDN, remind you of anything?) is easy to find but I'm as surprised as I was with Force.com. Workday developer access appears only to be available to Partners and Customers and the web pages are confusing and poorly laid out. I give up.

[edit 01/26/13]: Naomi Bloom pointed out that Workday was deliberately not a database platform. I'd assumed that it was, at least to its customers. Their lack of openness gets a thumbs down from me, but it's unfair to grade them.

Grade: N/A.

IBM

[edit 01/26/13] This section added with thanks to Vijay Vijaysankar of SAP. Once Blue, always Blue!

My first impression of IBM is they have gone to the effort of creating a brand that is developer-focussed: Developerworks. I went to download the free-of-charge DB2 Express, and this requires the creation of an IBM ID, which took about 60 seconds, plus a confirmation email. One thing I noticed was a Mac OS X Version - the only on-premise solution that has this here, which is pretty cool. From there it's a direct download.

IBM also has cloud provisioning options. Whilst IBM's Smart Cloud requires you to contact an account representative (I can't be bothered), the link to Amazon AWS take you right to an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) where you can directly buy the software. Nice. $111 a month gets you a one-year contract for an 8GB RAM system, or it's $0.32 an hour, and you can get started right away.

I moved onto DB2, which is available on a 90 day trial for on-premise use, plus a cloud option on a variety of different providers - very impressive. To download it I had to provide a phone number. After that I can download any version for a 90 day trial, either as an installer, or as a VMWare image.

With DB2 in the cloud, you have the same list of options and I chose AWS. You can only get DB2 Enterprise if you use IBM's SmartCloud but DB2 Workgroup Edition is available on AWS. This is $1.32 an hour, or you can Bring Your Own License if you have one already.

Grade: B+. IBM clearly outdoes Microsoft because of the variety of options. Whatever option you want, IBM has a solution for you. Awesome.

Google

I found the developer site at developer.google.com pretty easily, but it doesn't work unless you're on Google Chrome (yuck, Internal Server Error). That's ridiculous. I'm then faced with a vast number of options... and totally confused. Google has clearly a huge ecosystem but I have no clue where to start.

Some while later I have muddled my way through the confusing user interface and figure out how to use their App Engine to generate a simple web app. I'm surprised by the complexity compared to Force.com. That said, I know how very powerful apps can be built in this platform and I suspect it's just an up-skilling problem. Google could do much better with the user experience and on-boarding.

Grade: B. Fantastic potential and easy to get started if you know how, but a very unintuitive user interface.

SAP

I feel I've done enough research now to do a proper analysis of SAP's developer access so it's time to fire up a fresh browser. It's fair to bear in mind that SAP does have quite a broad portfolio of databases, though that could be considered confusing to developers.

First up, Sybase ASE (Sybase's relational RDBMS). I find the download page easily and I'm off downloading the software fast. There's not Microsoft's sparkle for making it easy to get started and the Sybase database is reminiscent of Oracle (amusing, given that it shares lineage with Microsoft SQL Server). ASE is certified for use in AWS but I can't find pricing or an image.

For Sybase IQ (Sybase's columnar analytics database) it takes me longer to find the download page for a 30-day trial (who does 30-day trials of database software?!) but one of the forums has a direct link to the latest version of the software. There is also an Express Edition available and a Developer Center (no, wait, here's another) but the web pages are fragmented and confusing. I guess the design thinking team were asleep at their desk that day. I can't find any cloud based editions of IQ, nor any virtual images.

Now onto SAP's flagship database, SAP HANA. I google "SAP HANA Download" and start to feel rather nervous:

It appears there is no free download of SAP HANA. You have to sign up to be a partner to be able to download it and pay a substantial yearly fee.

So I've found there is a 30-day trial of SAP HANA in the cloud. It's running an old version of SAP HANA 1.0 SP04 and you have to register for the SAP Community Network to get onto it and then wait 48-hours. If I want to get going with SAP HANA right now, I can pay $2500 a month to Amazon for HANA One, which is 60GB of HANA. Alternatively I can pay uCloud $207 a month for a 16GB instance, which will get me started. But I'm cheap so I'm done.

[edit, 01/28/13] - So there are developer editions of SAP HANA for AWS available here that cost $0.45/hour all-inclusive for a basic 16GB instance. If you buy for a year in advance that's $150 a month, which isn't so bad.

[edit, Greg Chase asked me to review NetWeaver Cloud. It's kinda out-of-scope but does run on SAP HANA]

NW Cloud is SAP's cloud-based app platform. I'm feeling hopeful here as I google "NetWeaver Cloud" and the first page says "Get your free SAP NetWeaver Cloud Developer Edition in 5 minutes". I click, eagerly. You need to register with SCN to get an account, which is fair enough and I then have to go through a set of screens to accept the product, after which I get the message "Access was denied due to export control restrictions."

Grade: D. Software availability is poor and web navigation confusing.

Conclusions

My first conclusion is that the on-premise database vendors (Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP) are all at varied degrees of maturity with their developer experience. In order, it's 1) IBM, 2) Microsoft, 3) Oracle and 4) SAP. IBM in particular has a really good option of AWS cloud instances that make getting running as a developer easy, and on-premise software that's easy to download.

Of the cloud DB vendors (Salesforce.com, Google) - and in fact overall, we have a winner in Salesforce.com. I sat down with SAP co-CEO Jim Snabe last year and told him that he has to think about the developer experience as a process, which starts at a thought and ends at an app - and then obsess about making it easier. This is what Benioff has done with Salesforce. Every piece of unnecessary latency has been taken out of the process.

I'm not convinced that the Database.com platform can compete feature-feature with the SAP HANA and NetWeaver cloud platforms (let alone performance), but for startups and new people deciding what platform to use, that's often not a factor.

The hard truth is that SAP is way behind even Oracle, who allow a free easy download of their in-memory database. And that's without taking into account that what the ecosystem needs is a ton of small developer shops producing amazing apps. Those guys don't have time or patience for the process and cost involved in becoming a SAP HANA developer.

And the fact is this: if SAP wants to be a serious database player, it needs to get access to developers, fast. Here's what's needed:

1) A free download of SAP HANA for Linux and Windows and as a VMWare Image. Yes, I know it needs lots of RAM. RAM is cheap.

2) A for-sale developer appliance (Mac Mini or whatever) with 16GB RAM. Yes, it works, I've tried it.

3) A free developer cloud edition with 16GB RAM. Put a system together that pauses them and saves them to disk when not in use.

4) A revamp of this SCN website. It's buggy, hard to use and the database platform tools are all in different places with different user experience.

So, I'm throwing the gauntlet down. SAP wants to be the #2 database vendor by 2015, and to do this it needs as good a database developer experience as Force.com. Microsoft and Oracle are an interesting comparison, but they're not the bar.

By the way, you should follow me on Twitter.

Why did SAP buy Sybase?

C.J. Thomas — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:28:47 GMT

While watching the recording of last week's press conference for the launch of SAP HANA for ERP, I noticed something that already struck me a number of times before.

At 18 minutes into Hasso Plattner's introduction, a presentation slide comes up titled "Where We Are Today".

It reads:

"Thanks to the power of SQL, only one version of Suite will go forward using not only HANA but DB2, Oracle, MS-SQL, SAP-ASE as well."

That's all good, but what struck me here is "SAP-ASE" being mentioned last. This must be about "Sybase ASE" - I've seen it named "SAP Sybase ASE" elsewhere - but why is it mentioned after Oracle and Microsoft?

After all, SAP spent 5.8 billion to acquire Sybase in 2010. After the initial press coverage it got very quiet around Sybase. And that's odd: Sybase was supposed to be a strategic and database-centric acquisition for SAP. Yet SAP never seems to bother even mentioning Sybase.

A case in point is Hasso first mentioning Oracle, DB2 and MSSQL with ASE trailing at the end: it doesn't sound like he cares much about the Sybase databases. If Hasso or SAP did care you'd expect to see ASE always mentioned first. Okay, let it come second after HANA, but definitely the pecking order should be that all non-SAP databases only get into the picture after HANA and Sybase ASE.

It was not the first time this made me wonder. When was the last time you heard Sybase being promoted at a big SAP event?

So what has happened to Sybase? Their products had a good reputation, with Sybase ASE strong at Wall Street. Sybase had probably disappeared off most IT people's radar but with SAP blowing wind in Sybase's sails, great things could have happened. Sybase still has thousands of paying customers and SAP sure wants to keep them happy. Staying mum about Sybase will not achieve that.

I occasionally tried to discuss the Sybase issue at the big SAP events, but finding folks with opinions ain't easy. Most agree Sybase is invisible. Consensus on the reasons there is not:

Buying Sybase was a mistake since SAP is exclusively about HANA.

This one I got at the HANA booth at Sapphire (perhaps not surprisingly). The Sybase databases will be closed down and the developers reassigned to HANA or leave. This is not impossible but then there comes a point where SAP must write down those acquisition billions and I guess they'd rather avoid that (HP/Autonomy, anyone?). SAP may have gotten some technology from Sybase but if that really played a role in HANA you'd expect SAP to give that fact much more exposure, if only justify the acquisition.

SAP only took the Sybase mobile software but never knew what to do with Sybase databases which they just forgot about and now they're quietly circling the drain.

The rationale behind acquisitions is often more boneheaded than you'd think so this is a definite possibility. But also here a huge write down would be looming which makes this theory unlikely.

SAP just needed fresh new customers to sell SAP applications to.

At least that's how Bill McDermott's quote can be understood: "With this transaction, SAP will dramatically expand its addressable market by making available its market-leading solutions to hundreds of millions of mobile users, combining the world’s best business software with the world’s most powerful mobile infrastructure platform". This actually makes sense because as we all know the ERP market has become saturated and is more of a replacement market now. But also here you'd expect more rumble about Sybase if SAP wants to approach those customers.

Sybase was destined to be SAP's flagship database.

According to SAP at the time of the acquisition, "Sybase’s core database business will be enhanced by SAP in-memory technology to deliver integrated transactional and analytical capabilities, according to SAP." This sounds like putting the HANA concept inside Sybase. When you think of it, that actually makes a lot of sense: take some startup ideas and put them in a well-established proven product.

But there must have been a change of plan because HANA took the #1 spot. Maybe the Sybase technology was not as good as it seemed but SAP only found out after the deal?

SAP has a plan to use Sybase technology as part of HANA but does not want to give it exposure.

I would have believed this two years ago but if they still have not figured it out by now, it ain't gonna happen. Business Objects got much better visibility in comparison.

Sybase is SAP's secret weapon: while HANA is sold at premium price, Sybase will be deeply discounted to undercut Oracle, Microsoft and IBM for everyone who does not buy HANA.

Such a two-pronged strategy would make a lot of sense, especially because HANA seems very expensive for ERP (remember, you need to buy special hardware for HANA too). But SAP's corporate silence around Sybase doesn't add up. Even a great secret weapon does not sell itself. And from what I understand the pricing for Sybase is exactly the same as for Microsoft and IBM. So whatever the plan is, it's not this one.

In short I just don't see how the Sybase acquisition makes economic sense to SAP unless Sybase databases are either aggressively marketed/sold or the Sybase technology somehow gets a prominent place in HANA. In either case SAP would need to give it exposure or Sybase effectively dies as the silence erases it from memory. And that would make the acquisition a failure.

If SAP is forced to write down the Sybase acquisition that would be a public embarassment for SAP and surely it will not be appreciated by investors. It also calls into question SAP's technology vision.

So if I had the opportunity to ask Hasso a question, it would be this: you have stated repeatedly HANA is the future, but how does Sybase fit into this? Please enlighten us.

2013 - the year of the SAP Database

John Appleby — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:25:45 GMT

We've heard a lot about the SAP HANA database platform over the last 18 months since its release, and whilst we are in the quiet period between end of year and SAP releasing earnings reports in mid-January, the investors I talk to are talking about bookings between €350m and €400m for the year (as compared to €160m in the first full year, 2011), which probably makes SAP HANA the fastest growing database of all time, if not the fastest growing enterprise software product - ever.

But despite all this, SAP HANA still has relatively small market share. That's not to knock HANA, she's still a youngster compared to Oracle, which is now 34 years old. Oracle claims on its (albeit hyped) company fact-sheet that it has a massive 308,000 database customers. And SAP is now the #4 database vendor, behind Oracle (49%), IBM (20%) and Microsoft (17%) - numbers as per Gartner in 2011. I believe that this is going to start changing in 2013 - here's why:

Product Availability

First, we now have awesome Database & Technology platform availability across the existing portfolio:

- All SAP products now run on Sybase ASE - including ERP, CRM, BW, Solution Manager and the BI4 suite.

- All the Analytics Products - BI4 suite, Visual Intelligence, Predictive Analysis run on Sybase IQ and SAP HANA

- Some SAP products (SAP BW, SAP CRM and soon - SAP ERP) run on SAP HANA

- [Edit, 13 Jan 2013] Business Suite on HANA - ERP, CRM, PLM, EAM has now been released!

This means that if you want to, you can run all of your SAP apps on a SAP database. I don't believe there is a current software revision that requires a non-SAP database. What's on my wish-list for 2013?

- Support for some limited older SAP releases for Sybase ASE. Pick the top 5 or 10 most popular product combinations!

Pricing and Bundles

We will see what the pricing fairies have to offer when 2013 pricing is released but I'm confident SAP is going to ensure that customers can take advantage of this availability if they want to! We have some of these already:

- Aggressive price for SAP HANA scenarios: runtime licenses are 25% of an Enterprise license and BW on HANA is priced at 37%.

- Impressive Analytics bundles for new BI customers, at 20% in addition to your BI Suite license cost, including SAP Data Integrator and Sybase IQ.

- [Edit, 13 Jan 2013] Business Suite on HANA has been released and is priced by % application value! Awesome!

- [Edit, 13 Jan 2013] Business Suite on HANA customers can do partial migrations and get Sybase ASE included for the rest of the portfolio.

What's on my pricing wish-list for 2013? Lots of things!

- Database & Technology bundles for all a customer's needs e.g. ERP on HANA customers get Sybase ASE for the rest of the portfolio included. If SAP are clever, they will make these bundles easy to understand and buy. If they are really clever, they will make it the same price as Oracle!

- Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs) that are subscription-based for the whole D&T portfolio as a percentage of license price.

- Enterprise License Agreements for a fixed amount for unlimited usage in large customers.

- Improved mechanisms for resellers

All of this should mean that if customers want to buy SAP Database, they will be able to do so in a flexible and beneficial way that allows them to get off the 11% that they currently pay SAP for Oracle licenses.

New Features & Functions

2012 was a pretty amazing year of features and functions for SAP Databases, including:

- SAP HANA SP04 and SP05 which introduced High Availability, proper Backup & Recovery, transactional system support and Disaster Tolerance.

- SAP HANA XS Application Services and Portal with improved developer tools.

- SAP HANA Predictive Analytics Library for in-memory predictives.

- Sybase ASE 15.7 with a plethora of new features including compression and performance for SAP applications.

- Sybase IQ 15.4 with more features including improved compression.

- Improvements in portfolio TCO with Solution Manager

I hear there is a small army of developers working on this in 2013 and I've got a big wish-list here too!

- Aggressive new PAL functions to allow more complex modeling in SAP Predictive Analysis

- 3rd party tool certification including Informatica, SPSS, Cognos etc.

- Data Aging between SAP HANA and Sybase IQ to allow petabyte stores at a lower price point

- Single SAP Database Studio to monitor all products

- Increased SAP HANA maturity with support for larger systems and better transactional performance

- Integration of Sybase ASE, SAP HANA, Sybase IQ and Hadoop into a single RDBMS portfolio with clear delineation

- Better roadmaps - todays are just marketechture (login required).

If I'm being honest, I doubt there is anything on this list that isn't already on the product backlog and the rate at which these guys are producing software is pretty amazing, so I expect to see this all next year!

Marketing and Awareness

The SAP marketing peeps had a lot to get on with to explain the Sybase acquisition, new SAP HANA product, availability of SAP HANA for BW and overall database portfolio in 2012. Now in 2013, there's a lot to get on with!

- SAP ERP on HANA will be announced soon, and getting messaging by industry and by use case is incredibly important. What does it mean to customers' businesses and where is the value?

- Increasing awareness of how SAP HANA is a mission-critical database now with all the usual features/functions like HA, DR etc.

- A lot of people don't know the information in this blog, like how Sybase ASE runs all of the SAP portfolio including SRM, SCM etc.

- Focusing on developer awareness and user groups to get new developers on the SAP/Sybase portfolio.

- Focusing on my wish-list below too!

- Creating a really clear brand for not just HANA but also Database as a whole and making SAP a better choice than Oracle for customers.

Lots to get on with here then!

Making the Technology Easy to Adopt

When I discuss this topic, people are often dismissive because Oracle, IBM and Microsoft have such a stranglehold on DBAs and CIOs. In order to get mass-market adoption, SAP needs to make the technology easy to adopt. They've done some of this already:

- Free developer licensing for SAP HANA, Sybase IQ and Sybase ASE with click-through licenses.

- Free Hasso Plattner Institute learning courses.

- The SAP HANA Academy - free E-Learning for SAP HANA. I was involved in this early on and I think it's an amazing project that SAP have done a great job with.

- Migration tools for ASE and HANA. Some of these exist already, and I believe SAP are also working on an Upgrade/Unicode Conversion/Migration tool that does everything in one step - this will be a major step forward.

- Synchronized Maintenance Schedules. One of the major cost contributors for Enterprise Software is the decoupled maintenance schedule of Database and Application. With Sybase ASE, SAP HANA and SAP Business Suite, you can update the Database and Application at the same time, saving the cost of doing testing and change management twice.

It's clear to me that SAP need to do even more in this space because adoption is by far the biggest hurdle. Here's my wish-list for 2013:

- SAP HANA Developer downloads. Gary Elliott from my team makes a great case for this. SAP need to make HANA a 64-bit Windows 7 download for developers. It exists internally. Release it please!

- SAP HANA Developer systems. SAP needs to team up with an OEM like my SAP HANA Mac Mini that can be purchased pre-installed. Developers like real hardware.

- More migration tools and agile delivery plans. Let's push the Systems Integrators to make it easy!

- Automated parameters for Sybase ASE - more work can be done here to configure this database automatically to reduce TCO.

- Take the HANA Academy to all D&T products including Sybase ASE and IQ.

- Create SAP Database & Technology TCO tools to help CIOs understand the cost reductions possible.

Final Words

SAP has already done an amazing job of building a database business from almost nothing in 2010, to $750m in 2011 and $1.1bn in 2012. Curiously, Sybase 2010 revenues were a total of $1.2bn, of which $880m were said to be database-related. Did they decrease in 2011 or are the numbers just counted differently?

To really punch its weight in this business (and meet its ambitions of being the #2 database vendor by 2015), it needs to grow 300% to a whopping $4bn from the 2011 number. To do this is really has to fire on all cylinders:

- Increase the overall capital database market with innovative products that add value.

- Eat market share not just from Microsoft and the smaller vendors, but also from Oracle, IBM and Teradata. The 2012 statistics will be fascinating to see, when they are available.

- Capitalise on the SAP install base to grab land from Oracle, IBM and Teradata.

- Sell into the non-SAP analytics market with HANA and Sybase IQ bundles

- Build the cloud application and HANA application portfolios

But to my mind - one thing is for sure: if SAP plays its cards right this year, 2013 will be a pivotal year for SAP Databases and they could break the $2bn barrier for license revenue. I'm looking forward to my small part in it :-)

SAP launches program to help veterans

Siva Darivemula — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 01:59:05 GMT

Recognizing the commitment to military service and sacrifices made by those who chose to serve in the armed forces is an American tradition. To help veterans develop skills for successful IT careers, SAP Americas announced the Veterans to Work Program today.

Key aspects of this announcement are:

SAP will offer training and certification for US veterans on its database and technology, analytics, and enterprise mobility solutions including SAP HANA, Sybase and other database and technology products that are an intergal part of this community.
SAP will offer 1000 veterans with full scholarships over next 12 months
SAP and its ecosystem partners will help graduating veterans launch promising IT careers with placement assistance.
First group of veterans started class this week in Texas. SAP aims to train 1000 veterans in the next 12 months in California, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. Through online access, the program will also be available nationwide.

It is always exciting to welcome new professionals to the SAP community. After their training and certification, veterans can maintain/enhance their skills, gain new perspectives and network with SAP users and professional around the world through SAP Community Network and its resources and assets for the technologies and solutions they learned through this program. We welcome the new members to the SAP database community!

Learn about this program at www.sap.com/veteranstowork. You can also like the program page on Facebook and follow on Twitter @SAPVetsToWork.

Why you should check out ASE 15.7 ESD2

Rob Verschoor — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:32:41 GMT

Recently, ASE engineers again managed to deliver a bunch of pretty useful new ASE features and enhancements. This fits a trend: when looking back a year or so, as part of SAP, ASE has definitely become a better general-purpose RDBMS. You'll probably remember that ASE 15.7 was released in September 2011 with features like data compression, a new kernel for threaded CPUs, new LOB (text/image) features, query performance enhancements, and much more. That was a great step forward, and at the time we said much more was coming. So, fast forward: a few weeks ago (early August 2012), ASE 15.7 ESD2 was released. Despite being an ESD, this ASE release actually contains a truckload of great new features as well. You should really check these out since some of these are just so useful... Let me just highlight a selected few that I like particularly (I hope to come back to some of these topics in the time ahead).

larger database size - First, the maximum size of an ASE database has been doubled as of 15.7 ESD2. This means that with a 2KB or 16KB page size, the maximum size of a single ASE database is now 8TB or 64TB, respectively (and you can still have thousands of such databases in a single ASE server).
async database creation - When creating such a large ASE database, waiting for the creation process to complete could take a while. To make that a bit easier, ASE 15.7 ESD2 lets you create a database in asynchronous mode with create database MyDB (...) with async_initThis means that the creation process returns control more quickly, allowing you to start using the new database. The new aspect here is that, at that point, the database has not been completely initialized yet, but it is online and accessible. While you start using the database to create tables and load data, the initialization process continues transparently under the covers. How can you not like that?
split/merge partition - For big data sets, ASE already provided semantic table partitioning in version 15.0. In 15.7 ESD2, this has been extended with split-partition and merge-partition functionality (syntax is alter table MyTable merge partitions (...) and alter table MyTable split partition (...)). These have been on many people's wish lists for a while.
non-blocking table rebuild - An exciting feature is the new 'online' mode for the reorg rebuild command. reorg rebuild MyTable rebuilds the entire table (and all its indexes), but access to the table is blocked while the rebuild operation is in progress. With the new syntax reorg rebuild MyTable with online , ASE will rebuild the table too, but users can still select, insert, update and delete on the table while the rebuild operation is in progress. This is a great step forward for system availability and I'm sure many ASE users will like this (NB: create index in online mode is not yet available, but it's in the works).
faster update statistics - As every ASE DBA knows, running 'update statistics' frequently is a must-do; in ASE 15 this especially applies to 'update index statistics' on multi-column indexes. Yet, on large tables running this on multi-column indexes may take too long for the available maintenance window. This is where the new hash-based update statistics comes in: by using hashing techniques to sort the column data, update statistics can run a lot faster for those cases (typically, faster than when using update statistics with 'sampling'). All it takes is the new syntax update index statistics MyTable with hashing (some syntax variations exist).
faster index creation - When creating an index with the with consumers clause, the index can now be created in parallel. Technically, this was already the case before 15.7 ESD2, but the parallelism has now been greatly improved, leading to shorter index creation times. (note that some configuration steps are needed to make this work best)
query performance - Another area where much work was done is in performance optimizations around query processing. Much of this is internal to ASE and affects things like reduced spinlock contention (and therefore, CPU usage) around various internal resources, as for example the ASE procedure cache. This will benefit every ASE user and I warmly recommend upgrading to 15.7 ESD2. I've said it before: in ASE 15.7, always enable the configuration parameter streamlined dynamic SQL, even if you don't use any dynamic SQL. This parameter is the master switch for a wide range of internal query processing optimizations that everyone will benefit from.
MV's - A much-requested feature has now been delivered to ASE: Materialized Views. You can now run create materialized view mv1 (...) as select * from MyTable, YourTable where (etc.)and then use the MV in a query just as any other table. There are various options, for example for the refresh mode of the MV (not discussed here). Note that the ASE documentation refers to MVs as "Pre-computed Result Sets" (the syntax create precomputed result set is identical to create materialized view).
security & permission - some long-standing requests for enhancements to ASE's permission mechanism have been made. A common comment was that the powers to the sa_role were too broad -- so you can now grant permission for each type of DBA operation individually. For example, you can create a user with permission to run the shutdown command, but no other things that sa_role allows you to do. This feature is known as "granular permissions". Another new feature is "predicated privileges" which lets you control access on data row level. This is similar in concept to the "access rules" or "fine-grain access control" that were introduced in ASE 12.5, but the new predicated privileges are more powerful, flexible and easier to use.

Let me end here for now, even though the list of new stuff in 15.7 ESD2 is not complete. As you can see, there's something for everyone in 15.7 ESD2, and we're delivering functionality that's been on many people's wish-lists (including mine) for quite some time. No doubt, you have a particular favorite feature that's not yet there, but we're working on that, too (and that's hardly meant as a joke). Stay tuned!

SAP’s Database Vision – Get the Right Answers

Siva Darivemula — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:55:57 GMT

Reproducing an article written by Dan Lahl and David Hull from April 2012 as it is relevant (except for live tweetchat) for this new space focused on database.

April 10, 2012 by Dan Lahl

Co-written by David Hull

Have you heard the latest news today? SAP announced its database management vision in downtown San Francisco. You wonder what it all means? We can help you with some answers for the questions you might have.

First, SAP’s vision is to be the leader in business technology and data management innovation and help its customers to maximize business results with minimal IT landscape disruption. SAP HANA will be at the center of this next-generation strategy with its in-memory technology and real-time capabilities. Added to that will be deeply integrated Sybase and SAP products and technologies for both data management and data movement. We want to extend data movement, integration, quality and governance. Second, for us it’s important to provide customer value by making data management and movement processes seamless and less disruptive, while enabling new and innovative applications through an integrated real-time data platform approach. Third, our goal is to simplify the architecture and enable and allow our customers to mine social media, big data, mobility and the cloud for data that can truly provide business impact. We don’t want to lock-in customers – quite the opposite – SAP HANA continues to be open for customers and partners, as evidenced by the number of hardware vendors with certified SAP HANA configurations.

Now you might wonder what does that actually mean for customers and how do they benefit?
The integration of these solutions leads to a transformation of existing business processes and helps to simplify IT landscapes. Most importantly, SAP will focus on data management innovation and SAP HANA as a real-time platform that supports major emerging trends in technology, including social media, big data, mobile and cloud, while at the same time bringing existing applications along for the ride.

You are still not completely sure what role Sybase’s data management products play and how it comes together with SAP HANA?
SAP will continue to invest in Sybase’s current products, because they’re the repository of some of the best technology innovation in the market today for data management. SAP plans to bring together the products from Sybase and SAP to make the best possible solution for customers. In the short term the Sybase data management products and SAP HANA will share data via replication and data services. SAP Sybase ASE will seamlessly replicate data to SAP HANA to provide application transparency for OLTP and analytics within one architecture. In addition, SAP HANA and SAP Sybase IQ will share data, so the customer can optimize their analytics environment for performance and TCO. Finally, SAP HANA and SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere will be able to synchronize data between data center and mobile devices.

Medium term we will see more of a sharing of technologies between SAP HANA and the Sybase database assets to optimize performance and accelerate the integration of the products. In the long-term they will fully integrate and share technologies to provide a new SAP real-time data platform to provide massive performance boosts and run new innovative applications not dreamed of prior to the advent of in-memory data management.

Q&A Tweetchat #SAPQA today at 3pm PT
If you still have open questions or want to know more details, we can help you: We will offer a Tweetchat where you can ask your questions to our three database experts, Dan Lahl (@jcjaks) and Amit Sinha (@tweetsinha) from 3-4 pm PT today, Tuesday, April 10. Follow the hashtag #SAPQA on Twitter or go directly into the Tweetchat to ask questions by using #SAPQA and be part of the conversation. This is your chance to get firsthand insights from our experts, don’t miss it. We will be waiting for your questions.

Dan Lahl is senior director of Product Marketing at Sybase and David Hull is senior manager of Database & Technology Marketing at SAP.

Sybase ASE, Oracle, FUD & You

Rob Verschoor — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:06:20 GMT

According to a recent report from the Oracle dungeons, SAP Sybase ASE runs on coal and steam, and a Sybase DBA's main task is to drag heavy bags of coal and shovel them into the server's engine. Also, it is pointed out that rumours that the next version of ASE will run on clean natural gas, are definitely false.

OK, I'm making that up.

But it is hardly an exaggeration of the quality of the argumentation with which Oracle recently tried to discredit the superior Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of Sybase ASE over Oracle.

Here's what happened.

The 38-page report in question, titled "Database Manageability and Productivity Cost Comparison Study Oracle Database 11g Release 2 vs. SAP Sybase ASE 15.7", was in fact not directly published by Oracle itself but by a company named ORC. In case you're wondering, that stands for "Opinion Research Corp. International" -- which is aptly named since the report looks pretty opinionated indeed. The ORC report is also notably light on facts, rich in contradiction, and showing few signs of any technical understanding of Sybase ASE, or of how a DBA administrates any database, whatever flavor.

So, just in case you find this report in your inbox one of these days, let me help you put things into perspective.

(a link to the report is included at the end of this note)

Not All TCOs Are Created Equal

The basic premise of the ORC report is that Oracle database is 71% more efficient to administrate than Sybase ASE, representing significant cost savings through lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

This efficiency gain is 'proven' by comparing the installation of Oracle and Sybase databases, as well as a number of DBA tasks in both databases, administrated exclusively through a GUI interface. The number of steps required for each task, and their elapsed time, are taken as the basis for comparison.

Thing is, these comparisons are done in such a shaky way that it is hard to figure out where to even start pointing out the flaws. But let me try anyway.

The first thing to note is that the ORC findings contradict TCO studies by IDC and Bloor Research -incidentally, two better-known companies in the database world than Opinion Research Corp. International- that demonstrate a clear TCO advantage for Sybase ASE over Oracle (anywhere from 20% to 85%, depending on the angle taken).

Note that the IDC and Bloor reports are based on actual primary research from customer interviews.

Second, both Gartner and IDC have defined broadly accepted TCO methodologies for estimating long-term Return On Investment (ROI), which involve cost of software, hardware, opportunity cost of down time, and ongoing IT staff costs. However, the ORC report ignores all this; instead, they use a custom approach based on an arbitrary set of manual administration GUI-based activities which -surprise!- conveniently shows Oracle having an advantage.

Lost in Logic

The ORC report is not entirely wrong: for example, it points out correctly that SAP is working to make Sybase ASE the underlying database for SAP Business Suite. However, it then argues that the cost of operating SAP Business Suite would increase if customers were to use ASE.

Unfortunately for ORC though, that argument is invalid even if the rest of the report would have been flawless. You see, SAP Business Suite users don't perform database installation, or the regular DBA activities, with the GUI tools used in the ORC report. Instead, those activities are all done through, or encapsulated by, the SAP installer or SAP tools like DBA Cockpit. Therefore, the 'proof points' that are paraded to argue that ASE is less efficient in SAP Business Suite than Oracle, do in fact not apply to Business Suite at all. This is just one example how this report is not exactly a triumph of logical reasoning. (but true to Oracle form, it is great anti-marketing and great FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt))

Even without this self-contradiction, the claim that installing Oracle is faster (15 minutes and 8 mouse clicks) than Sybase ASE (33 minutes and 25 mouse clicks) is pretty wild, as any DBA who has installed both databases will be able to attest. Just for fun I ran a full install of ASE 15.7 on Windows myself. For the record, I'm all done in 8 minutes.

I wonder why ORC sees such a different picture from what I'm seeing? Maybe the ORC guys are just slow in clicking through the ASE installer which they are not so familiar with?

Also, I don't think it is a coincidence that this test was done on Windows and not Linux or Unix. Having installed Oracle myself, there is always a large number of steps in the lengthy Oracle install process on Linux/Unix. Also, often things need to be fixed on O/S level first before you can continue, as the Oracle installer will in fact helpfully point out. Just check the pre-installation requirements here (or better, try to install Oracle on Linux for yourself -- and feel the pain).

In contrast, installing ASE is very straightforward on any platform (don't take my word for it, but try it; you can download ASE here or here).

Apples, Oranges and Other Fruit

When you look at the rest of this report in detail, things also appear to take pretty strange turns in many places:

For example, one of the aspects being 'tested' is how to make a backup. What ORC appear to do is to setup, but not run, a backup in Oracle, which takes 8 seconds (fair enough). In Sybase ASE, they actually run the backup which takes 33 seconds from start to finish, only to conclude that Oracle does this much faster than Sybase ASE.
Yeah, right. Since the Oracle backup was not even executed, this isn't comparing apples to oranges, but rather like comparing an apple to a bottle of cranberry juice.

Another 'remarkable' aspect is that the operating system used is listed as "Sybase Windows Server ASE 15.7 R2 Enterprise". Now, Microsoft may of course very recently have renamed its Windows O/S after Sybase ASE (if so, I'll get back to you on that). But it seems more likely that the person who compiled the report perhaps did not have much IT knowledge at all and maybe just edited around content provided by a third party? That would explain a bit of the hodgepodge that passes for a technical 'study' here.

I almost started to feel sorry for the ORC guy who performed these tests since his understanding of basic database concepts in general, and of Sybase ASE in particular, seems pretty limited at best (trying to stay polite here). For example, many Sybase DBAs do not use GUI tools to perform administration tasks, but rather use the much more efficient command line utility 'isql' (which is mysteriously absent in ORC's test setup).

Moreover, ORC's choice to compare only GUI-based administration tasks is another place where the link with reality is broken: one should realize that GUIs are not the stock in trade for how Sybase DBAs work on a day-to-day basis. Also, it is worth noting that ORC decided to use Sybase Central, an out-of-development GUI tool from Sybase for the comparison (Sybase Central is being replaced by Sybase Control Center).

The Oracle management tools used in the ORC report are in fact not available with Oracle Standard Edition (used by ever more Oracle customers), but are sold as a separate option. In contrast, Sybase tools such as Sybase Central, Sybase Control Center (ignored by ORC) and 'isql' are all available free of charge with any edition of Sybase ASE.

The license cost of Sybase ASE for SAP Business Suite is 8% of the SAP software costs (SAV). In contrast, Oracle comes in at 15%. At this point, you will not find it entirely surprising that ORC chooses not to discuss this or include it in their calculations.

A Failed 'Study'

I could go on, and on, and on, highlighting each and every flaw and misrepresentation. It would get boring though: there is just no end to it. ORC doesn't even make an attempt to hide their bias and blatant lack of DBA professionalism.

Frankly, it's too much honor for this highly flawed report to spend more time discussing it. It certainly does not deserve the name 'study', as ORC put on it themselves.

Overall, I'm trying hard to avoid the word 'misleading'. So let's just say it takes a very willing Oracle-minded reader to accept the conclusions of this report.

Oracle's Not-So-Invisible Hand

Interestingly, the report does not appear on ORC's website, but only on an Oracle blog page (update July 2012: the report now also seems to be available for download from computerworld.com).

There is actually no disclosure of any sponsorship in the ORC report. But as I illustrated, the quality of this report is below any reasonable minimum standard and it is hard to believe ORC produced this report on their own account.

Frankly, this report is so full of misleading statements, contradictions, apples-to-oranges comparisons and factual errors that I can hardly believe anyone but Oracle itself would give this a shred of credibility. Indeed, it bears all the hallmarks of vintage Oracle FUD. So let's just assume Larry's lieutenants did indeed commission this, and ORC just 'forgot' to include the disclosure -- it would be consistent with the style and quality of the rest of the report.

(disclosure on my side: I work for SAP/Sybase and I'm specialized in Sybase ASE).

BTW - I wonder what ORC thinks about Oracle's must-agree license clause forbidding to "disclose results of any program benchmark tests without our prior consent". There is certainly room to interpret 'any' as applying to the installation process as well. I'd be hard-pressed to believe ORC would have published this information without Oracle's consent. But as you guessed – no trace of that in the report.

Bring It On!

But let's end on a positive note.

The most interesting part of this report is that Oracle apparently feels threatened by Sybase ASE now that it's part of SAP, and feels the need to fight back.

Game on! At SAP/Sybase we are more than happy to engage.

A deeper look at Sybase: Column encryption in Sybase ASE

Rob Verschoor — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:44:29 GMT

In the series titled "A Deeper Look At Sybase", I'd like to look at one specific feature of Sybase ASE for data security.

One of the many features of Sybase ASE is the ability to encrypt individual columns of a database table.
With Sybase's footprint in the financial industry, it is not surprising that Sybase customers require an in-database solution for data security. But frankly, it is hard to imagine any real-life system today where data security would not be important.
Indeed, data encryption may sound like a no-brainer: who would not want to improve his data security? But as we'll see, making such functionality available in a way that is practically usable in real-life systems is in fact not trivial at all.

First, let's observe that most data items in a database are usually not very sensitive. Typically, there are only a few columns worth protecting. Common examples are a credit card number (for obvious reasons), or (in the USA) a Social Security Number (since these are targets for identity thieves). You can probably think of a few other ones.
In contrast, things like an address or ZIP code are usually less sensitive. Although admittedly, depending on the context in which data is used, that could be different.

By encrypting only those columns that need protecting, we can avoid wasting computing resources. If we simply encrypted the entire database instead, this would cost more CPU (for encrypt/decrypt) and storage (since encrypted data occupies more space) than necessary for only the sensitive table columns.

One of the reasons why Sybase customers use ASE column encryption is the PCI DSS standard (short for "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard"). At some point, the credit card industry got tired of indemnifying customers whose credit card details got stolen from someone's database, and they mandated that if you were to store details about their credit cards, you had to protect the data against theft. The PCI DSS standard lays out a number of measures you must take in order to comply. One aspect of the standard is in-database encryption of credit card data (more details about PCI are here).

In-database column encryption in Sybase ASE was designed to meet all of the following goals:

Use industry-strength data encryption (AES128 & AES256).
Column encryption is specified as a declarative, schema-level attribute.
Encryption and decryption of data must be fully transparent to existing applications: no SQL should have to be changed in any application when encrypting a column.
When encrypting a column, this should have minimal or no performance impact for database queries.
Transactions involving encrypted columns can be replicated (with Sybase Replication Server) to remote ASE databases without ever decrypting the encrypted data.
End-users should not require any additional passwords or passphrases to access encrypted data.

In addition, based on customer feedback on the first version of ASE column encryption, an additional requirement surfaced that was implemented in ASE version 15.0.2. Customers wanted to be able to protect data from being accessed by the all-powerful database administrators (DBA), who traditionally have full access rights to any data (makes you wonder: what did those DBAs do to earn this sort of confidence from their paymasters? I know I'm innocent!)

At first sight, some of the above goals would seem to be contradictory. It sounds almost too good to be true, but ASE's column encryption does indeed achieve all of the above. Rather than discussing all technical aspects in full detail, let me just give an example.

Ignoring some one-time configuration steps, the first thing to do is to create an encryption key. This creates an AES 256-bit key named cc_key:

create encryption key cc_key for AES with keylength 256

You can create as many keys as you like. Keys are generated inside the ASE server through certified 3rd-party crypto libraries. Also, the generated key is stored in the ASE database -- but it is itself encrypted first (simply put, with a database-level encryption key entered by the DBA). This way, the actual encryption itself cannot be easily extracted from the database which makes it much more difficult for bad-character folks to do any damage.

An encryption key is used to encrypt a column. Here, we're encrypting only the credit card number. In this example, the card type and the name on the card are not considered sensitive and therefore not encrypted. However, those columns could simply be encrypted as well (with the same encryption key or with a different one):

create table Ccard (
                    custname char(30),
                    cardtype char(10),
                    cardno char(19) encrypt with cc_key
                         decrypt_default 'xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx' )

I'll get back to the decrypt_default clause in a minute.
First, an essential part of ASE's encryption solution is a separate decrypt permission which is required in order to read encrypted data. This permission should obviously only be assigned to those users or roles that need this access.
For example:

grant select on Ccard to public
grant decrypt on Ccard(cardno) to fraud_detection_role

In this example, only users who have been granted the role fraud_detection_role will now be allowed to decrypt the encrypted credit card numbers.
At this point, any queries against the Ccard table will automatically encrypt the credit card number value when inserting a new row, and automatically decrypt it when an authorised user selects a credit card number. The SQL statements to access the table are exactly the same as when no columns would be encrypted.

The importance of this application transparency cannot be overstated. Just imagine you would be forced to modify all SQL code accessing a table when you decide to encrypt a column: this would not be realistic for most real-life systems.

So, what happens when a user without decrypt permission tries to retrieve a credit card number? Instead of an error, the unprivileged user will retrieve a value of 'xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx', as defined by the decrypt_defaultclause. This allows existing SQL code to run without disclosing sensitive data to non-authorised users.

The example above illustrates the basic concept of ASE column encryption.
Security can be improved further though. For example, you may need to ensure those rogue DBAs don't run off with a list of credit card numbers.
To achieve this, Sybase ASE allows you to restrict access to encrypted columns to specific users only. Anyone else, regardless of their privileges, will not be able to access the encrypted data.
This works as follows (I'm not including a code example here since this would require too many details to be explained for this blog):

An encryption key can be protected with a password (the key cc_key in the example above is not password-protected); before the encryption key can be used, and encrypted data accessed, the ASE user must specify the password.
This would seem to put a requirement on the end-user to remember the encryption key password (which usually means writing them down on a yellow sticky paper that's glued to the screen or keyboard, thus defying the purpose of encryption). Remember that one of the design goals was to avoid the need for any additional passwords by the ned-user.
To avoid this, ASE's solution is a trick called "login association". This means that the encryption key password is stored inside ASE for a particular user. To protect the encryption key password, it is first encrypted by using the user's login password (which is itself encrypted) as an encryption key.
When this user logs in to the ASE server with his regular ASE password, this will be used to retrieve and decrypt the encryption password which is then used to automatically enable the encryption key. Thus, just by logging into ASE, a user gains access to the encrypted column.
To ensure that other users, like the all-powerful DBA, do not know the encryption key password, performing any encryption key-related functions requires a special ASE system role. This keycustodian_role should be assigned only to a trusted person in the organisation.

In a nutshell, this is how to tie access to encrypted columns to specific users only. There's much more to say about this topic -- search the ASE documentationfor "login association" if you want full details).

ASE column encryption is a truly unique feature; other database vendors provide in-database encryption functionality as well, but no database except Sybase ASE has managed to combine all of the requirements described earlier.
With ASE's column encryption feature, Sybase/SAP brings strong data security to mission-critical enterprise systems.

Some final notes:

Sybase recommends setting things up with a small database containing only the encryption keys, and the actual encrypted data in the (big) production database. This means backups of the production database are secure: since they do not contain the encryption keys, encrypted data cannot be decrypted. The idea is that the small database with encryption keys rarely changes and therefore backups will rarely be made as well -- and those that are made, are stored in a high-security environment. This all matters since one of the simplest ways of stealing sensitive data is probably to grab a copy of a database backup -- and for a production database, many backups typically exist.
The ASE query processing subsystem is encryption-aware. This means that most SQL queries in Sybase ASE will use the same query plan whether a column is encrypted or not. For example, when searching for a particular value in an indexed and encrypted column, the search argument value is first encrypted with the same encryption key as used for the column itself; this encrypted value is then used to look for the desired row. Also, when joining two tables on encrypted columns, the join can be performed on the ciphertext values provided the columns were encrypted with the same encryption key. This all means that in most cases, the performance impact from using column encryption is small or even negligible.
Note that data security covers just one aspect of a secure system. Other aspects, like network security (e.g. SSL) and organisational structures (e.g. function separation) should get attention as well.
ASE column encryption is a licensable option for Sybase ASE.
ASE column encryption is not currently used by SAP Business Suite.

For more information on ASE column encryption, go to the product pages at sybase.com.
For full technical details, check out the ASE column encryption documentation.

So what does an ASE database look like in SAP ERP?

Rob Verschoor — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:55:32 GMT

(originally published at www.sybase.com in December 2011; moved to SCN in November 2012)

Unless you've been living in a cave with no internet connection, it will not be news that SAP and Sybase have been working on making SAP Business Suite run on Sybase ASE. Engineering teams from

the two companies (well, we're really one company now, but you'll get my meaning) have spent a lot of effort over the past 1.5 years or so, porting SAP's Business Suite to Sybase ASE. A question I've been asked a lot over the past months -by non-SAP ASE users- is what sort of ASE features are used by SAP Business Suite. We'll look at that, but first let's clarify some of the terminology. SAP Business Suite consists of five main parts which a SAP customer may or may not all buy. These are:

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
SRM (Supplier Relationship Management)
SCM (Supply Chain Management)
PLM (Product Lifecycle Management)

Now back to Sybase ASE: I had a look at an ASE database for SAP ERP. Buckle up, here we go:

SAP will be releasing Business Suite on ASE version 15.7.
All SAP application data resides in a single ASE database. There is another small database for use by SAP tools.
The ASE database uses a 16KB page size.
For ERP only (i.e. not counting CRM and the other Business Suite modules), the database contains about 80,000 tables and 170,000 indexes. This is because SAP ERP has many features and functions, all with their own set of tables. SAP customers typically run only a subset of all those functions so in practice a large part of those 80,000 tables will always remain empty.
All SAP tables use datarows locking (there is an interesting historical dimension here: check out the last big paragraph on this page)
All tables names are in uppercase; some table names contain special characters, like the slash character in "/BCV/C_QATTR" (I don't have a clue what that name means, BTW)
Apart from the tables, there are also about 10,000 views. No stored procedures or triggers are used.
SAP makes heavy use of dynamic SQL (also known as "prepared statements").
Many tables have a text or image column.
All tables are owned by one database user (and that's not the dbo user).
The ASE database is accessed through ODBC.
SAP makes frequent use of the built-in ASE Job Scheduler (originally added in ASE 12.5.1).
The ASE server uses Unicode with the utf8 character set.

An architectural aspect worth mentioning is that the database is completely encapsulated in a SAP system; it runs as an embedded component. Also, the database is always accessed through SAP tools, specifically SAP's 'DBA Cockpit'.

DBA Cockpit is pretty much what the name suggests, namely the central management tool for an SAP system. In principle, you would never access the database in the SAP system manually outside of DBA Cockpit. In ASE parlance: you wouldn't use 'isql' in an SAP system. Things like looking at query plans or MDA tables is all done through DBA Cockpit. In fact, I have to say that SAP's DBA Cockpit is a really nice management and monitoring tool. Because SAP controls the application and the middleware, they have been able to build pretty nice monitoring features into it, allowing the kind of detail and drill-down that every ASE user would like to have (before you ask: yes, DBA Cockpit is specifically designed for SAP Business Suite; and no, DBA Cockpit is not available as a separate tool outside the Business Suite context).

Another question that has been asked frequently is if existing ASE DBAs will be able to help SAP customers with the implementation of Business Suite-on-ASE. My best guess is that this is will probably not be a very common sight. The primary skill needed to work with SAP customers is knowledge of the SAP application and systems architecture. Installation and creation of the ASE database is all handled by the SAP tools.

Having said that, Sybase ASE skills will definitely be needed somewhere. Customers who run SAP systems on Sybase ASE, especially for large installations, will need some DBAs with ASE knowledge. I've said it before: with the SAP acquisition, having Sybase skills (ASE, IQ, Replication Server) will eventually turn out to be a Good Thing.

With SAP's recently stated ambition to become the #2 database company in a few years time (read more about that here), that's another reason to keep your ASE skills up to date -- and to migrate to ASE 15.7.

Meet Sybase ASE 15.7, "the SAP release"

Rob Verschoor — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:10:58 GMT

For most folks in the Sybase database community, there has been no escaping the news about the recent release of version 15.7 of Sybase ASE, Sybase's transactional enterprise database.

I'm guessing though, that the SAP community has hardly noticed. That's not surprising since ASE does not really have an established place in the SAP world today. However, as this will change tomorrow (figuratively speaking, that is), SAP customers may be interested after all. So let me summarise the highlights of ASE 15.7...

ASE version 15.7 is internally also known as "the SAP release" since this is the version of ASE that SAP will use to release Business Suite-on-ASE (stay tuned for more news on that topic in the near future). Not long after SAP announced its plans to acquire Sybase in 2010, a joint engineering team was set up by both companies with the purpose of porting Business Suite to ASE as well as optimizing ASE for Business Suite. Apart from features that were already planned anyway, ASE 15.7 therefore also contains functionality specifically to make SAP Business Suite run better. As I described before, A Deeper Look At Sybase: History of ASE when SAP approached Sybase around 1993 or so. Therefore, come 2010/2011, ASE had some catching up to do with respect to Business Suite-specific requirements. The good news is that, with Sybase part of SAP now, the Business Suite application and the ASE database can be integrated more efficiently than would be possible with any 3rd-party database. Indeed, I have witnessed how requirements identified by the SAP Business Suite team could be delivered by the Sybase ASE engineering team in record time. In the end, having ASE as the database underneath Business Suite will deliver more value to SAP customers due to the better integration and optimization that can be achieved.

So, what does ASE 15.7 bring to the table?

As always, ASE's main themes include providing improved performance and scalability, reduced TCO and more efficient handling of large data volumes, both for structured an unstructured data.

Specifically, there's a new threaded kernel for the ASE database (you can tell I'm a techie as I make this point #1). What this means is that the ASE kernel has been partly redesigned to run more efficiently on the latest generations of parallel threaded processors. In a nutshell, instead of performing all operations in one big O/S process, ASE 15.7 hands off work (like I/Os) to native threads, as these can execute more efficiently. The old kernel is still available, and fully supported, but we expect to see the new kernel being used more due to its improved performance.

Another major new feature is database compression so as to achieve more efficient storage of large data volumes. In Sybase ASE, you can now enable compression for all or selected tables and columns, as you prefer.

Next in line is vastly improved handling of unstructured (LOB) data. ASE has always supported CLOB and BLOB datatypes, but handling these in SQL, well, left some things to be desired. That has been improved dramatically in ASE 15.7.
Also, the compression feature mentioned above integrates particularly well with LOB data storage, thus allowing you to keep the volume of unstructured data under control.

Apart from these major features, there's a truckload of smaller features and featurettes, performance enhancements and usability improvements -- just too many to mention here (but go to www.sybase.com/aseif you want more details).

Now, why does any of this matter for SAP customers? When running Business Suite on Sybase ASE, all that great database technology is pretty much invisible under the covers (as indeed it should be).

The answer: by using ASE 15.7 as the database for SAP Business Suite, SAP customers will be able to operate their system more efficiently against lower costs I'd like everyone to know that ASE 15.7 contains some state-of-the-art technology and is has specific optimizations for Business Suite. In the mean time, at Sybase we keep doing what we've done for years, namely delivering rock-solid reliability (as well as performance, scalability, and all the other goodies) to our regular customer base which includes the financial sector of this planet.

In other words: ASE is a safe choice for your enterprise data.

Oh, and not unimportantly, ASE will be fully supported on Itanium, now and in the future (unlike certain other databases I could mention).

Should you be attending SAP TechEd in Madrid, I will be there on November 9th to discuss Sybase data management technology for SAP customers.
My schedule looks as follows:

My speaker POD hours are Nov 9th, 11:00-13:00, POD9, Hall 10 (session ID TEC-P10, "Sybase Data Management: Addressing IT Needs from Wall Street to Main Street")

For the Expert networking lounge, I'm signed up for two half-hour sessions on Nov 9th, from 14:00-15:00 in Lounge 1, Clubhouse. If you want to discuss things in more detail, we can sit down there.

From 15:30 to 16:30, I will be delivering my technology presentation TEC-108, titled "From Wall Street to Main Street - Why Run SAP Business Suite on Sybase ASE"

So if you'll be at SAP TechEd Madrid, come and meet me if you want to discuss Sybase data management technology.
See you there!

Big & small stuff in ASE 15.7, and a note for 'Peter'

Rob Verschoor — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:09:25 GMT

(originally published at www.sybase.com in October 2011; moved to SCN in November 2012)

Last week I did my part in a 5-episode webcast series about Sybase ASE 15.7 - the latest and greatest incarnation of your favorite OLTP DBMS (and not just yours: ASE is also SAP's preferred OLTP DBMS; see here for more).

In case you missed it: ASE 15.7 was released on September 28th, and can now be downloaded by anyone with a Sybase support contract. For everyone else, the Developer Edition and the Express Edition for ASE 15.7 are also available now.

Specifically for a guy named Peter, I can now finally shed some light on a tech question he brought up -- so Peter, since I did not have your email address, keep reading...

ASE 15.7 is packed with new functionality. I cannot actually remember an ASE release with so many new features as ASE 15.7. I guess that's the reason why the webcast comes in 5 installments.

My part of the webcast was about application development features. This means: enhancements to SQL functionality or syntax whose focus is to deliver better (or more) functionality - as opposed to better performance or shorter maintenance downtime, for example (which ASE 15.7 also has, but that's the topic of subsequent webcasts). You can listen to the webcast recording here.

Let me just briefly recap the highlights of these application-developer-oriented features in ASE 15.7.

First, there have been enhancements to handling of text/image data (collectively known as LOB data). For as long as I can remember, customers have asked for the ability to declare SQL variables and parameters of the text or image datatype. In ASE 15.7, that is now possible. This can be particularly handy when doing XML processing on mature XML documents, which can easily exceed the maximum length of 16KB for a varchar variable.

Another LOB enhancement is known as "LOB locators". This is best described as a "pointer" to a LOB variable. When a client application wants to operate on a LOB value (like truncating/overwriting/concatenating it, etc.), ASE 15.7 can send the LOB locator to the client rather than the full LOB value, which may be big. The client app then operates on the locator with new (and existing) T-SQL statements which are sent back to the ASE server where the operation on the LOB value is effectuated. This improves efficiency since no big LOB values need to be exchanged between client and server, but only the small (24 bytes) LOB locator values instead.

If this all sounds a bit cryptic, check out the webcast slides for more detail and examples.

Another enhancement in ASE 15.7 is the MERGE statement. I have blogged about this before, so see there for more details. Suffice to say here that MERGE is a more efficient way of inserting-or-updating a bunch of rows into another table than you could ever code yourself with separate insert an update steps.

This is the point where Peter comes in. At the end of the webcast one listener with that name asked a question which I was unable to answer at the time. His question was whether you can force an index in the MERGE statement in the same way as for other types of query. After consulting with the responsible engineering team, the answer has to be that, unfortunately, this is currently not supported; the same applies to other query plan forcings (I/O size etc) as well as to specifying an abstract query plan. Should you try this, you may find that it actually works fine. However, be warned: it may also just as well not work, since there is currently a number of known issues when using these clauses for MERGE. For that reason, we recommend you do not try to use any query plan forcings around the MERGE statement for now.

There is also a new feature that is perhaps less about app development and more about performance after all. In a nutshell, by enabling the config parameter 'streamlined dynamic SQL' (disabled by default), a series of internal optimizations around query processing becomes active (not just for dynamic SQL, but for many other types of queries too). This should translate into better performance although it is -as always- hard to predict how much gain you may see in your system. So I'm not going to speculate. Instead, please let me know what you find. There is no reason not to use this optimization, so please give it a try...

Lastly, there are some features that qualify as 'small' in comparison to the other topics discussed. These include syntax enhancements; for example, certain constructs are now allowed in subqueries that previously caused an error.

As it happens, my favorite new ASE feature falls actually in this category. If you want to convert the number 123 to a 6-character string, and pad the result with leading '0' characters (i.e. '000123') in pre-15.7 you had to use the following expression (figuring out how this works is left as an exercise to you, reader):

select right(replicate('0',6) + convert(varchar,123),6)

In ASE 15.7, you can now simply specify the padding character as a third argument to the str() function, so the following is now sufficient:

select str(123, 6, '0')

Any padding character can be specified (a '*' would result in '***123').

Admittedly, it did probably not require a major effort by Sybase's most talented engineers to implement this enhancement. But I always really like such little features that make my life easier when coding SQL. Small can certainly be beautiful.