How to Model, Build, and Deploy Native SAP HANA Applications...How to Model, Build, and Deploy Native SAP HANA Applications Building SAP HANA Applications As a result the delivery

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Document Version: 1.0 – 2014-12-22

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How to Model, Build, and Deploy Native SAP HANA Applications

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© 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.


Typographic Conventions

Typographic Conventions

Type Style Description

Example Words or characters quoted from the screen. These include field names, screen titles,

pushbuttons labels, menu names, menu paths, and menu options.

Textual cross-references to other documents.

Example Emphasized words or expressions.

EXAMPLE Technical names of system objects. These include report names, program names,

transaction codes, table names, and key concepts of a programming language when they

are surrounded by body text, for example, SELECT and INCLUDE.

Example Output on the screen. This includes file and directory names and their paths, messages,

names of variables and parameters, source text, and names of installation, upgrade and

database tools.

Example Exact user entry. These are words or characters that you enter in the system exactly as they

appear in the documentation.

Variable user entry. Angle brackets indicate that you replace these words and characters

with appropriate entries to make entries in the system.

EXAMPLE Keys on the keyboard, for example, F2 or ENTER .


Document History

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© 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. 3

Document History

Version Date Change

1.0 2014-12-22 Initial revision

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 5

2 Structure of a SAP HANA Application ......................................................................................................... 6

3 Building SAP HANA Applications ............................................................................................................... 10

4 Assembling SAP HANA Applications ......................................................................................................... 15

5 Installing SAP HANA Applications ............................................................................................................. 16

6 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 17

7 Further Reading ............................................................................................................................................ 18


Introduction

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1 Introduction

This article describes the building blocks and the structure of native SAP HANA applications and the tools and

procedures in order to model, build, and deploy them. Native SAP HANA Applications are applications written in a

native SAP HANA programming language such as SQL Script or JavaScript and may contain database artifacts

such as tables or views (analytic, attribute, calculation) and are developed in the SAP HANA repository. The tools

and procedures introduced in this article are valid for all productive deployment scenarios of SAP HANA

applications as well as for testing and validation purposes. Productive deployment scenarios include shipment of

applications to external customers, deployment of applications in an on premise landscape as well as

deployments into the cloud.

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Structure of a SAP HANA Application

2 Structure of a SAP HANA Application

An SAP HANA application consists of source files which are stored in a hierarchical package structure in the SAP

HANA repository. This is a view on the demo application SHINE which is described in the SAP HANA Developer

Guide and stored in sub-packages of package sap.hana.democontent.epm:

In the context of SAP HANA this is all that is needed to execute the application. The following is shown when

opening the application URL /sap/hana/democontent/epm:



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Delivery units were introduced in order to combine packages and in order to be able to export and import them

from one system to another. This is a glance at the delivery unit named SHINE for the SHINE application using the

SAP HANA application lifecycle management tool:

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Besides the “Assigned Packages” section which lists the packages that are part of the delivery unit and that make

up the application there are some meta-information such as name, version, and description. The dependencies

section shows dependencies to other delivery units. A delivery unit can be exported from a system and imported

into a system. The exported delivery unit is a .tgz file (a gzip compressed tar file).

In theory this format would be sufficient to ship an application however the delivery unit format does not support

the following use cases:

An application might consist of multiple delivery units

An application may require a particular version of the database software or other applications to be present

prior to being able to install this application

Depending on the customer environment it is only required to install part of the application

Bundle translation delivery units together with the application delivery unit

For supporting these use cases SAP HANA products have been introduced. SAP HANA products consist of

product instances that have delivery units assigned to them. If a product has multiple instances an administrator

can decide to install only a subset of the available instances. The SHINE application is relatively small as it only

consists of a single delivery unit. Therefore the product structure is relatively simple: the product consists of one

product instance with ID 1 which has one single delivery unit named SHINE assigned.



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More complex products can consist of several instances, each having several delivery units assigned.

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Building SAP HANA Applications

3 Building SAP HANA Applications

The key activity for building an SAP HANA application is to write the application code, define tables, views,

calculation views, etc. These artifacts are stored in SAP HANA repository packages as shown above for the SHINE

application. There are two major development environments available for building SAP HANA applications: the

SAP HANA studio and the Web IDE. Describing these development environments and technologies is out of scope

for this article; they are covered in details in the SAP HANA Developer Guide.

SAP HANA application lifecycle management (HALM) can be used to complete the additional tasks to model an

application for shipment, to build it, and to install it on the target systems. The screenshots of the package

structure, delivery unit- and product details were taken from the HALM UI.

SAP HANA application lifecycle management is a web application which is shipped with each SAP HANA system

and a command line client which is shipped as part of the SAP HANA client package. The web application is an XS

application which is located at /sap/hana/xs/lm and the command line client is named hdbalm and located in

the installation directory of the SAP HANA client package. The HALM web application can be used to model the

product and delivery units for the application and the command line client to build and deploy it. The screenshot

below shows the home screen of HALM. The circled tiles “Products” and “Delivery Units” refer to the product and

delivery unit views which can be used to model the application.

A new delivery unit can be created using the "New Delivery Unit" dialog which can be opened by clicking “create”

on the Delivery Units view. Enter the delivery unit name and optionally a version, a description, a responsible, and

confirm the dialog by clicking the "create" button. This screenshot shows he "New Delivery Unit" dialog for

creating the "SHINE" delivery unit:



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The next step is to assign the packages to the delivery unit. Select the SHINE delivery unit created in the previous

step and click on the “Assign” button. Select the sap.hana.democontent.epm package, make sure the “Select

Sub packages” check box is selected and finish the dialog by clicking the “Assign” button.

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As a result the delivery unit has been created and packages have been assigned to it as shown in the first section

of this document.

Having created the delivery unit is it time to create the product in the “Products” view of HALM. Click on “Create”,

enter the product name and optionally a version and description field and select the checkbox to create the

default instance (you will be able to create additional instances later on) and finish the dialog by pressing

“Create”.



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The next step is to assign the delivery unit which has been created above to a product instance. Make sure

“Instance 1” is selected and click the “Assign Delivery Unit” button. Scroll down the list or enter “SHINE” in the

search field in order to locate the SHINE delivery unit and press the Assign button in order to assign the delivery

unit to the product instance.

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The product now has been modeled in the system.


Assembling SAP HANA Applications

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4 Assembling SAP HANA Applications

In this section we describe how to build an application archive for the application that we have modeled above.

This application archive is a container which can be used to ship your application to your internal IT department,

to an external customer, or to the cloud. The application archive contains the delivery units and product meta-

data that have been created as shown above.

The hdbalm command line application which is part of the SAP HANA client package can be used to assemble the

application. The following command builds the application archive (user name, host, and port can also set in the

environment):

hdbalm -u -h -p assemble SHINE_APPLICATION

As a result a ZIP archive named SHINE_APPLICATION_10.ZIP is created which contains the SHINE delivery unit

as well as the product metadata which we have modeled above.

The generated ZIP archive is shown below. It contains two descriptors (STACK.XML, PD.XML) which describe the

product metadata and a ZIP file (SHINE.ZIP) which contains the SHINE delivery unit and optionally the

translation file.

There are a number of additional options which are described in the SAP HANA Developer Guide as well as in the

help text for the command which can be shown by running the following command:

hdbalm help assemble

Using a command line tool may need some time to get used to but there is also a great advantage: it is possible to

automate delivery processes ensuring that delivery procedures are identical for each release. It can also be used

to run extensive tests which consist of an assembly procedure, installation procedure and automated unit- and

integration tests.

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Installing SAP HANA Applications

5 Installing SAP HANA Applications

Once an application archive has been built it can be installed on a different system by you, your IT department, or

your customer. Application installation is also supported by the hdbalm command line client as shown by this

command:

hdbalm -u -h -p install SHINE_APPLICATION_10.ZIP

As a result the SHINE application will be installed on your HANA system just like you modeled it in your original

system. A command line tool supports repetitive procedures as well as automated integration tests mentioned

above.


Conclusion

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6 Conclusion

In this article we have shown the simple steps necessary to model, build, and install a native SAP HANA

application. The tools and procedures are just the same as they are used by our organizations to ship native SAP

HANA applications. Product archives are a consistent container for all artifacts that belong to an application

including one or multiple delivery units as well as their translation files and product metadata.

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Further Reading

7 Further Reading

Documentation for the hdbalm tool is provided in the SAP HANA Developer Guide:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_hanaplatform/helpdata/en/70/17483ff82c497dbb112ec105920640/content.htm

?frameset=/en/3e/bd49dfe54045529a82773e3505e31a/frameset.htm&current_toc=/en/34/29fc63a1de4cd6

876ea211dc86ee54/plain.htm&node_id=475&show_children=false

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_hanaplatform/helpdata/en/70/17483ff82c497dbb112ec105920640/content.htm?frameset=/en/3e/bd49dfe54045529a82773e3505e31a/frameset.htm&current_toc=/en/34/29fc63a1de4cd6876ea211dc86ee54/plain.htm&node_id=475&show_children=falsehttp://help.sap.com/saphelp_hanaplatform/helpdata/en/70/17483ff82c497dbb112ec105920640/content.htm?frameset=/en/3e/bd49dfe54045529a82773e3505e31a/frameset.htm&current_toc=/en/34/29fc63a1de4cd6876ea211dc86ee54/plain.htm&node_id=475&show_children=falsehttp://help.sap.com/saphelp_hanaplatform/helpdata/en/70/17483ff82c497dbb112ec105920640/content.htm?frameset=/en/3e/bd49dfe54045529a82773e3505e31a/frameset.htm&current_toc=/en/34/29fc63a1de4cd6876ea211dc86ee54/plain.htm&node_id=475&show_children=false

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How to Model, Build, and Deploy Native SAP HANA Applications...How to Model, Build, and Deploy Native SAP HANA Applications Building SAP HANA Applications As a result the delivery