Re: What are the limitations/challenges in HANA sidecar

Hi Hidresh,

The advantage of sidecar is that you can continue using your existing system as-is while using HANA as a secondary database.

The way the current SAP systems work is, the data is transferred from database to application layer and calculations are performed in application layer. Here you have significant latency between disk to memory transfer and then calculations in application layer.

HANA databse on the other hand is optimized for mass parallel processing and performs calculations in the database layer and only submits a result set to the application.

Below are several limitations -

1. Data must be loaded from current database to HANA database using any of the existing replication scenarios (DXC, Data Services, SLT) or abap custom code
2. If you require real time loading into HANA sidecar you will still need SLT or have custom code that loads to HANA via secondary database connection everytime a change is triggered
3. Custom abap programs are needed to be able to connect to HANA database and retrieve/insert/update data
4. To fully optimize the performance of HANA as sidecar, all custom abap code must be optimized to run SQLSCRIPT in order to fully utilize the HANA calculation (refer to part_2 blog for more details)
5. HANA only runs on SUSE LINUX SP11 so if your current hardware/os does not include SUSE LINUX you will need get hardware specifically for HANA
6. This would mainly improve reporting but not affect the daily performance of your existing transaction system
7. HANA as sidecar using in BW landscape is similar (not the same) to how BWA in current BW landscape works

This blog gives you a general idea of how you can use HANA as a sidecar approach.

You can also view the following blogs - part_1 and part_2 to see how you can achieve this.

Thanks,

Sharan