In my previous blogs I talked about different possibilities and scenarios where SAP Replication Server fits perfectly well solving real life use cases but from now on I will dedicate some new blogs to very interesting new features in latest SAP solutions, some of them will related to SAP Replication Server but some others not.
Some of the most expected and interesting innovations come with HANA SP09 that was available at the end of 2014, we can mention for instance SAP Hana Multitenant DB containers, Dynamic Tiering, Smart Data Streaming … etc. and one of these solutions is SAP HANA Accelerator for SAP ASE that is the focus of this blog
What is A4A
SAP HANA Accelerator for ASE (A4A) is a Hana option that gives SAP ASE users the analysis capabilities provided by SAP HANA, that is, with A4A user is able to analyze data in Hana or run Hana reports on ASE data.
SAP HANA Accelerator for SAP ASE provides some interesting features:
- Tightly integrated HANA/ASE environment both running in same landscape
- Unified installer
- SAP HANA Cockpit for SAP ASE administration and maintenance
- Customer experience is as if they are working in a single server
- Support for old SAP ASE applications to connect and run directly on SAP ASE
- SAP HANA accelerator for SAP ASE supports high availability, this requires the configuration of an SAP ASE standby host
A4A Architecture
When talking about HANA accessing data on SAP ASE there are 2 possibilities:
- SAP ASE data can be replicated to Hana local tables using SAP Replication Server
- SAP Hana accesses SAP ASE data using Smart Data Access, that is, creating virtual tables pointing to physical tables residing in SAP ASE.
Once you can access SAP ASE data from HANA, no matter if they are physical tables being replicated from ASE or virtual tables pointing to SAP ASE tables, you can use those tables to create Hana Attribute, Analytic or Calculation views.
The big picture for A4A architecture is:
It is important to mention that SAP ASE can also read data from Hana if needed using SAP ASE’s CIS capability (Component Integration Services), that is, virtual tables can be created in ASE pointing to Hana physical tables.
Requirements and limitations
- Supported operating systems for SAP HANA Accelerator for ASE are:
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5
- The SAP HANA and accelerator for SAP ASE hosts must run same operating system.
- It is not mandatory but highly recommended to use NTP server for the Hana system landscape
More of A4A and other Hana features in upcoming blogs
More details in SAP Sybase documentation:
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