Hi Everyone,
I have been using HANA SPS09 for a few days and wanted to share my favourite HANA SPS09 features
My most favourite feature in SPS09 is availablity of XSJS SMTP API
Many new features have been added to XS like Full CORS support, availability of ZIP and REST based APIs and XSDS
But still SMTP API is my favourite and now sending e-mails from HANA is very easy and it has solved many problems.
Configuring SMTP is very easy, you just need to enter SMTP Server name and enter User credentials.
To configure SMTP, go to the below link:
http://<host><port>/sap/hana/xs/admin/#/smtp/ and we will need the role sap.hana.xs.admin.roles::SMTPDestAdministrator to configure SMTP
By default you will see the below screen:
It took me sometime to figure out how to edit this configuration and finally I found the Edit button at bottom right corner of the page.
My second most favourite feature in SPS09 is HANA Cockpit
We can get information about HANA status in a single glance using HANA Cockpitand is really very useful. Administrators will love this tool and whats' more, most of the tiles in the cockpit are clickable and you can click on them to get detailed information
To see HANA cockpit, go to the below link or open from HANA Studio then R-Click on your System -> Select Configuration and Monitoring -> HANA Cockpit
http://<host><port>/sap/hana/admin/cockpit and we will need the below role to see it
sap.hana.admin.roles::Monitoring
My next favourite feature is availability of Rank function and Time Travel Support in Calculation View and Performance Analysis Debug Editor
In SPS09, many enhancements have been made to HANA Modeling like Redesigned Semantic node, Package level Schema Mapping enhancements to input parameters, restricted columns, currency conversion etc. but Rank function, Time Travel and Performance Analysis Debug Editor are my favourite among all.
When we open Calculation View in new HANA Studio in SPS09, we see that Semantics has been moved to the right side with different tabs as seen from the below screenshot.
One more thing that I like in new design is that Execute In option is clearly visible while it was hidden before.
Next is introduction of Rank Node and now we won't need to write SQL on top of Views for ranking.
Next thing is Performance Analysis Mode. This was introduced in SPS08 and now it also has another option called Debug this View.
When we click on Debug this View, it automatically generates standard SQL Query and then we can run it in debug mode.
Then the View opens in Read Only Mode and we can also open PlanViz at the same time and check
One more nice thing is that we can now remove and replace nodes
My next favourite feature is getting Graphical Editor for creating repository roles and addition of User Parameters while Creating a user using Graphical Interface
In HANA we create Repository roles as these can be transported to Production Server but we need to write code to create these roles and at many customers, SAP Security is handled by a separate Security team and many of whom are not much familiar with databases. So graphical editor will make their life easy
We need to use HANA Web IDE to create new Graphical based hdbrole and for that open the below URL and we should have role sap.hana.ide.roles::EditorDeveloper
http://<host><port>/sap/hana/ide/editor
Secondly, if we need to maintain User parameters like E-Mail, Time zone etc, then we needed to write SQL statements up to SPS08, but now we can maintain these parameters graphically
My next favourite feature is Self Services
SPS09 provides web-based user self services for resetting password and requesting new user account.
To configure Self Services, create a Technical user as it is required to execute user self-service requests and assign him the role sap.hana.xs.selfService.user.roles::USSExecutor
For this configuration, we need below roles:
sap.hana.xs.admin.roles::RuntimeConfAdministrator
sap.hana.xs.admin.roles::SQLCCAdministrator
sap.hana.xs.ide.roles::SecurityAdmin
Now go to URL:
http://<host><port>/sap/hana/xs/admin/
In the Application Objects screen, navigate to the package /sap/hana/xs/selfService/user assign the technical user to the selfService.xssqlcc artifact
Now open HANA Studio and change below parameters in xsengine.ini file as per your needs
Then you can open the below URL and check all your pending requests and manage whitelists and blacklists, for this we need role sap.hana.xs.selfService.admin.roles::USSAdministrator
http://<host><port>/sap/hana/xs/selfService/admin
My another favourite feature is new HANA Login Screen
I love the Fiori like feel of it
And if Self Services is enabled, you also get two more options as sown below:
Lastly, one of the most interesting feature I noticed was this:
SYSTEM user is also not able to grant roles to itself. I guess SAP wants to discourage use of SYSTEM user in Production Systems.
Regards,
Vivek