SAP Inside Track Munich 2016 - SAP HANA Cloud Platform

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SAP HANA Cloud PlatformA Travel Report

The SAP HANA Cloud Platform – A Travel Report

Agenda

© msg | October 2016 | SAP Inside Track Munich 2

1. Why did we do the HCP Journey?

2. Let’s talk about the Journey

3. Looking back … and forward


Disclaimer


• No code snippets

• No life hacking

• Just a man and the plain truth

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net


Why did we do the HCP Journey?


• Goal: develop a (partner) product in the HCP Professional Business Software Development

• Getting real life experience

• Checking the maturity of new technologies

• And … curiosity: we wanted to do some development at the (b)leading edge


What did we want to build?


• Application using the HCP with:

UI5 Apps available in the Fiori Launchpad

Business Logic is implemented as SAP HANA Native Application (XS Classic)

Using some HANA features namely: Predictive Analysis Library (PAL) and Text Analytics

• Usage scenario of HCP: PaaS (including Infrastructure, Database) + Business Service


Let’s talk about the Journey


Image courtesy of anankkml at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Start: Q2/2015 – End: Q2/2016Team Size: 3


Step 1: Get a Productive HCP



Step 1: Get a Productive HCP – Experience


• Agility of the pricing table was high (seems to be subject of biweekly rolling updates)

• The HCP comes at different flavors concerning the available services that a delivered via bundles Choose wisely

• Do not forget to order the HANA instance if you need one, it is not included in the HANA Cloud Platform… and do not expect that HCP and HANA are available at the same point in time

• Attention: No real “Cloud”-characteristics for SAP HANA (scaling etc.) Choose wisely

• Services that might be part of the selected package now (but were not then) have to be ordered separatelye. g. HCP Predictive Services


Step 2: Administration – HCP


• HCP (without HANA) Rolling Updates No Downtime Larger changes can happen True, works as expected

• No real administrations tasks necessary

• How to get informed for the updates? Subscribe to a mailing list (No automatic subscription) and/or to SCN area

• The stability of the offered services is okay. The Java runtime seems to be the most instable component (not of relevance for our project) HCP itself also sometimes not reachable (rarely)


Step 2: Administration – SAP HANA



Step 2: Administration – SAP HANA


• SAP HANA (in HCP) was a drama at the beginning (duration approx. 2 months)

Examples: • 50 crashes in the first week• 100% CPU time of HANA for a few days (we did not do anything on SAP HANA)• “The file that could not be deleted”

You have to do the admin tasks, but have only limited access (Neo and HANA Studio)

Support has potential for improvement

Release cycle of patches is not clear (got better)

SAP HANA patching means downtime

Good News: Stabilization since SP10


Step 3: Development - Tooling


• Web-based Tooling was used mostly (as recommended by SAP)

• Web IDE for UI5 Development No complains

• Web-based Development Workbench for HANA XS Development Job could be done, but not as “stable” as expected Fallback on Eclipse when the web-based tooling failed (sometimes necessary)


Step 3: Development – Tooling


If you discover an error, open an OSS …


Step 3: Development – HANA XSC + PAL + Text Analytics


• HANA XSC Development As expected No surprises

• Text Analytics Powerful toolbox Not very comfortable to “debug” No tooling support (Dictionaries, CGUL rules)

• PAL (Predictive Analysis Library) Surprisingly buggy (e. g. k-means did not work in SP10) Documentation is incomplete (parameters are not documented, but used in examples) Unhandy to integrate into an XSC application (real persistence is needed at several spots) Difficult to identify the root cause of an error


Step 3: Development – UI5


• UI5 Development in HCP Quite smooth (however some issues had to be faced)

• BUT: What if you want to bring together a UI5 App with the RESTful HANA XSC services? Propagation of User authentication is needed (Principal propagation or App2App SSO)

• At the point of development there was no documentation on that topic

• Several months after opening an OSS this issue was solved

• Meanwhile a blog post on the topic exists:http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/cloud-platform/blog/2016/03/21/principal-propagation-between-html5-and-sap-hana-xs-on-sap-hana-cloud-platform


Looking Back


• HCP is getting more and more “professional”e. g. administration, usability of the cockpit, consistency

• Cloud characteristics (compared e. g. to Azure) leave room for improvement

• Pricing is definitely an obstacle

• Exclusive hosting by SAP is a limiting factor for customers (Will it get better with the “new” HCP?)

• UI5 development is a very positive featureBut: Build chain support is missing


Looking Back


• SAP HANA instance in HCP is not a pure pleasure

Surprisingly unstable in several areas (has improved over the last SPs)

Overall support was not good

Features of SAP HANA are sometimes not easy to integrate

Integration into HCP is somewhat “bumpy”

• Organizational topics Dedicated skill set is needed Transferring an ABAP developer to this “world” and expecting him to be as productive as before will not

work


Looking Forward


• Availability and Stability of XSA in HCP?

• Migration from XSC to XSA?

• “New” HCP with Cloud Foundry: Consequences for the applications?



Thanks for your Attention

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msg systems ag (Headquarters)Robert-Buerkle-Str. 1, 85737 Ismaning/MunichGermany

www.msg-systems.com

Dr. Christian LechnerPrincipal IT Consultant

[email protected]

https://twitter.com/lechnerc77

https://people.sap.com/christian.lechner