Author: paschmann

Developing SAP HANA XS Web Applications – TechTarget

paschmann

Summary:

Developing HANA applications is a task split evenly between web, database and UI/UX Developers. This article outlines some helpful and useful tools for all 3 of the tasks when companies take on the challenge of HANA web app development.

Upon release of HANA SPS05, SAP introduced a great new feature called HANA Extended Services (Also known as the XS Engine). The concept was to embed a fully featured web server within the SAP HANA appliance. Not only was it a web server, but it also provided development tools and an application server. One core difference between traditional web servers and the XS Engine, is that it has the ability to execute SQL using the exposed core API’s using Server side Javascript (XSJS). Thus making accessing and modifying your database artifacts very simple and straight forward. With the SPS08 release of HANA, the XS Engine has come a long way and with the additional features, improved stability and the core performance increased, giving us an encouraging sign of a mature product. read more

iOS App: KB Manager

paschmann

I was trying to replicate the success of the SAP Note Viewer app over to the Microsoft Community since they have a similar concept to SAP Notes, in the form of KB articles. The app did OK with roughly 6K downloads in its lifetime, but ultimately not nearly as well as the SAP Note Viewer (15K downloads). I believe I should have put a bit more effort and focus on this app at the time, the user base is considerably bigger versus the SAP base, so it had the potential to grow into something considerably more substantial. As enterprise companies recognized the missed opportunity, many of them have started to offer their own support options, and the web has become considerably more responsive, enough to where native apps are not always needed. read more

My initial thoughts on SAP HANA SPS11

paschmann

Having been a long time follower and developer on the last 5 releases of HANA, I don’t believe I have ever been more excited to get my hands on a HANA release than SPS11. The inclusion of an entirely new XS runtime (XSA) and the ability to use Node.js and Java were just some of the features I was looking forward to. After figuring out that the SPS11 download was in the support/download portal on the 23rd November, I set out to get my machine up and running as quickly as I could …

After getting my SLES 11 SP4 machine installed/configured (I used the SAP SLES 11 SP4 Image from Suse), I downloaded the HANA SPS11 files, but after multiple failed attempts (even using the SAP Download Tool) the archives did not correctly uncompress and subsequently resulted in installation errors. After re-downloading the files no less than 5 times, I had a clean uncompress and the install was simple and straightforward, and worked like it should. I initially installed just a basic HANA instance, but struggled to subsequently install XSA. I ended up logging out of the root user account, logged in as my *adm account which seemed to get the install to successfully complete. While its been mentioned before, I will still reference the below statement from the documentation, since it will effect many admins wanting to install SPS11 on a SLES SP3 or lower: read more