New security and privacy features in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04

SAP recently announced the release of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04. SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 includes a mix of new and continuous innovations across the themes of database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

The new SPS 04 release of SAP HANA 2.0 provides important security and privacy enhancements addressing these challenges:

• Data anonymization KPIs increase transparency for decision makers when assessing anonymization scenarios, easy-to-understand new controls simplify the setup of anonymization views, and l-diversity enhances the k-anonymity method
• Audit retention policies let you specify a retention period after which audit log entries are automatically deleted
• Simplified authorization troubleshooting gets SAP HANA users up and running again quickly and with less administrative overhead

Data anonymization extensions
SAP HANA data anonymization, which was introduced with SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03, allows you to get analytical insights from data while protecting the privacy of individuals.

With the new release, SAP HANA introduces anonymization KPIs that help decision makers to assess critical variables for risk and utility. This makes it easier to achieve the right balance between the goals of protecting data privacy while ensuring that the anonymized data remains useful.

Real-time data anonymization was released with two anonymization methods: differential privacy and k-anonymity. Now l-diversity has been added, which is an extension to k-anonymity and provides additional protection for data sets with homogeneous sensitive attributes.

The setup of k-anonymity has also been simplified with the automation of generating hierarchies for generalizing quasi-identifying attributes, and data scientist can now control additional parameters when setting up anonymization views.

And finally, SQL views are now supported for data anonymization – previously only calculation views were available.

Audit retention policies
Fine-tuned retention management is an important building block for compliance. You can now specify a retention period after which audit log entries of individual audit policies will be automatically deleted.

But compliance requirements are not the only reason why you might want to delete audit log entries: you can of course also use this new functionality to free up database space, delete audit log entries that simply are no longer needed.

Simplified authorization troubleshooting
Authorization is a cornerstone of controlled access in SAP HANA. Defining authorization concepts requires careful thought and consideration. If authorization errors occur in either the test or productive landscape, they need to be quickly resolved so that users can access the database objects they require. The new authorization troubleshooting features introduced in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 aim to simplify troubleshooting by adding two new techniques.

Learn more at: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/08/address-business-challenges-in-security-and-privacy-with-sap-hana-2.0-sps-04/

New Features and Functionality in SAP HANA

SAP HANA 2 is the business data platform for the intelligent enterprise. Leveraging state-of-the-art database and data management technology, advanced analytical capabilities and intuitive application development tools in the only all-in-one, in-memory-first data platform – SAP HANA 2 frees up valuable resources and human capital for new and innovative application development to meet your business’s strategic objectives.

SAP recently released SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04. SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 includes a mix of new and continuous innovations across the themes of database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

Database enhancements 

• Advanced data and privacy protection including enhanced data anonymization with additional algorithms and configurable retention policies for the audit log. 
• Improvements for high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) will further increase system availability and help protect enterprise-critical applications with a new multi-target system replication option that now also supports multiple region-local A/A secondary, a further enhanced time travel option and a “Follow-the-sun” option that optimizes the latency for write transactions by rotating the primary system around the world. 
• SAP HANA now also offers a fast-restart option that is using TMPFS on OS Level to significantly reduce restart times with existing hardware. 
• The new Native Storage Extension allows tables, columns or partitions to be flagged as warm data, residing mainly on disk. Warm data is loaded to an in-memory buffer cache only as required for query processing. 

Data Management enhancements

• Support for federated access to high-availability Hadoop clusters, and a generic adapter framework for Smart Data Access. 
• Smart Data Integration now allows to group multiple agents, provides real-time support for Mainframe DB2 and integration into Web IDE. 
• To enhance the quality of your data SAP now provides geocoding support for India addresses and FIAS compliant address assignments in Russia.
• The Enterprise Architecture Designer now offers support for SAP Big Data Services and Hadoop Hive 2.0 data lakes as well as support for HANA versioned tables. 
• Calculation View modeling via Web IDE now allows to integrate data sources more easily, comes with improved user experience, enhanced support for parallelization and extended variable support for models.

Analytical Intelligence enhancements 

• Increase the execution performance and productivity for data scientists by providing API’s for Python and R as well as a new Gradient Boosting Tree algorithm. 
• New methods for linear referencing, hexagonal grid-based aggregation, labeling tools, new APIs with reduced memory footprint and Data Hub integration will allow you to gain the most insight from geocoding your business data. 
• Improved flexibility, debugging support, new functions and algorithms as well as extended GraphScript capabilities and openCypher support allow more complex analyses and scenarios for your connected data.

Application Development and Tool enhancements  

• View functions for both SQLScript and SQL, SQLScript Debugger and Code Analyzer enhancements and a unit test framework. 
• The Web IDE comes with improved editors, Python support, wizards and dialogs and now allows multiple workspaces and mass import of synonyms. 
• A pending deployment indicator helps developer to keep track of their deployment. 
• The XSA runtime now supports X.509 as well as SPNEGO authentication, supports tenant specific installations and support for symbolic links.
• The HANA Run Time Tools include an enhanced SQL console with session recovery, performance improvements and more flexibility. 
• The catalog browser now supports search across multiple schemas and comes with an improved user experience.

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Check out our new Whitepaper "What's new in SAP HANA?" to learn more about additional features and functionality found in the latest release of SAP HANA

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New Innovations in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04

SAP HANA 2 is the business data platform for the intelligent enterprise. Leveraging state-of-the-art database and data management technology, advanced analytical capabilities and intuitive application development tools in the only all-in-one, in-memory-first data platform – SAP HANA 2 frees up valuable resources and human capital for new and innovative application development to meet your business’s strategic objectives.

SAP recently announced the release of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04. SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 includes a mix of new and continuous innovations across the themes of database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

Here are the latest innovations in SAP HANA from SAP.

• Data tiering enhancements for improved scale
• Persistent memory hardware availability
• Scale-out enhancements
• Data protection and privacy
• Smart data access and Hadoop integration
• Hexagon grid clustering for spatial data
• Data scientist and machine learning improvements
• Spatial performance enhancements and algorithms
• User experience optimizations throughout

Learn more about SAP HANA at: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/05/whats-new-in-sap-hana-2.0-sps-04-2/

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SAP Positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics for Seventh Consecutive Year

SAP announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc., the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics report — where SAP has been positioned as a Leader since 2013.

The evaluation is based on completeness of vision and ability to execute. According to the report, “Gartner defines a data management solution for analytics (DMSA) as a complete software system that supports and manages data in one or many file management systems, most commonly a database or multiple databases.”

“We are convinced that our improvement on the ‘ability to execute’ axis in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics report — as compared to the previous year — reflects the success of our customers and the value they create with SAP HANA. It’s the only data management platform with a multimodel database, advanced analytics, machine learning and AI capabilities,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, senior vice president, SAP Database and Data Management and SAP Analytics.

“Looking ahead over the next year, we are very focused on making enterprises more intelligent through our proven solutions for analytics and our data management portfolios available on premise and in the cloud.”

To qualify for inclusion in this Magic Quadrant, DMSA vendors must have had to support one or more of the following four use cases Gartner identifies that support analytics: traditional data warehouse, real-time data warehouse, context-independent data warehouse and logical data warehouse.

Read the full announcement on SAP.com 

SAP HANA and the Digital Economy

IT groups no longer need to rely on 20th-century technology while seeking a strategic role in 21st-century business innovation. The revolutionary SAP HANA® platform lets you perform all transaction and analytic processing in-memory and make data instantly available from a single system. Fend off competitors by building smart, insight-driven applications your business needs to take immediate action and capitalize on change.

INCREASE EFFICIENCY, DEEPEN INSIGHT,  AND ADAPT TO CHANGE QUICKLY
Help your business accelerate the pace of innova-tion by moving to SAP HANA. Choose the game-changing in-memory platform that combines a database that complies with the standards for atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) with advanced analytical processing, appli-cation development, and flexible data integration capabilities. Remove the burden of maintaining separate legacy systems and their silos of data, so you can Run Simple in this ever-changing digital economy, where new technologies and solutions emerge at Internet speed.One of the most challenging roadblocks to innova-tion today is the sheer complexity of IT systems. SAP HANA can help you simplify your infrastruc-ture. As illustrated in the figure, SAP HANA con-verges database, advanced analytical processing, application development capabilities, and data integration in-memory to process transactions; analytics; text analysis; and spatial, streaming, and machine data processing in one system. You can operate in real time and accelerate business trans-formation by integrating core business processes with customer data, supplier data, and data from the Internet of Things.

The massively parallel, in-memory paradigm underlying SAP HANA speeds information pro-cessing by a quantum leap. This architecture converges online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) opera-tions on a single data copy in one in-memory, column-based data store. SAP HANA, in short, eliminates data redundancy, disk latency, and data movement among applications and analytical tools. And it provides advanced integration capa-bilities such as data virtualization, replication, bulk loading, transformation, cleansing, and remote data synchronization in the same architecture. This further simplifies application development and processing across Big Data sources.

SAP HANA is the platform for all existing applications – your legacy software, third-party software, and SAP software – and the optimal platform for building and deploying next-generation, real-time applications; machine learning applications; and predictive analytics. You can perform business operations and data analysis in minutes rather than hours, untangle your data center operations by integrating all data into a single truth, and lay the groundwork for reimagining business models. Plus, you stand ready to help expand and diversify your business with minimal IT growing pains.

View the full blog post on www.approyo.com

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Approyo will help you to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing software licenses, the underlying application infrastructure and middleware or the development tools and other resources. Our solutions take the enterprise system of record and supercharges it with the tools of digital transformation – coupled with a design thinking process specifically created for business modernization and agility.

SAP HANA powered by Approyo
SAP HANA is an in-memory data platform that lets you accelerate business processes, deliver more business intelligence, and simplify your IT environment. By providing the foundation for all your data needs, SAP HANA removes the burden of maintaining separate legacy systems and siloed data, so you can run live and make better business decisions in the new digital economy. With Approyo, you can deploy the latest version, SAP HANA 2.

SAP Hybris powered by Approyo
SAP Hybris focuses on rapid transformation and agility across all channels, getting you close to your customers and delivering a consistently great experience at every touch point. SAP Hybris makes products that cut cost, time and complexity, freeing you up to focus on innovation and strategy. SAP Hybris covers five main areas – commerce, marketing, revenue, sales and service – and offer you the insights and flexibility you need to lead.

SAP Leonardo powered by Approyo
SAP Leonardo is a holistic digital innovation system that seamlessly integrates future-facing technologies and capabilities into the SAP Platform. This powerful portfolio enables you to rapidly innovate, scale new models, and continually redefine your business.

SAP Leonardo delivers new capabilities in future-forward technologies, which add tremendous value along your company’s digital journey. But it’s made even more valuable because it’s built on SAP HANA, to support real-time business. Plus, SAP Leonardo works seamlessly with every SAP application from SAP Ariba to SAP S/4HANA, making them more powerful, intelligent, and capable.

SAP S/4HANA powered by Approyo
Written natively for the SAP HANA platform, SAP S/4HANA is an entirely new generation of SAP Business Suite that is characterized by simplifications, massively increased efficiency, and compelling features such as planning and simulation options in many conventional transactions.

SAP S/4HANA signals a move away from the transactional system that merely records data toward giving end users active decision support in real time that is based on data from both internal and external sources.

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See your business clearly with SAP HANA

You swim today in exploding amounts of data from internal and external sources. Keep afloat by taking advantage of the integrated data quality, data integration, and data virtualization capabilities of SAP HANA, a next-generation platform for in-memory computing. Help simplify your IT landscape and enable successful information management for all your analytical and operational implementations.

DELIVERING TRUSTED, COMPLETE, AND RELEVANT INFORMATION
Job one in the 21st century is digital transformation. But how exactly do you become a digital enterprise? At SAP, we designed SAP HANA to help you harness the latest digital technologies in the service of these overarching goals:

• Faster time to insight and action with real-time analytics
• Improved operational efficiency and productivity
• Agility to respond to rapidly changing market conditions
• Simplification of the IT landscape with integrated capabilities

Managing your valuable information successfully is the key to thriving today. With the data access, integration, and quality capabilities of SAP HANA, you can deliver immediate and targeted insight, so all stakeholders can act in the moment and make quick decisions based on complete, timely, and accurate data. You can also streamline processes to make your operations more efficient and effective – from your inner core outward to the edge of your global business network, including cloud platforms, mobile devices, and the Internet of Things. And you can seize fleeting moments of opportunity, reimagine long-standing business models, and create radical new sources of value that propel you to a leadership position in your industry.

Data Federation: Query data remotely – without moving it
Give information workers instant access to all of your organization’s data – with SAP HANA smart data access technology. Federate queries on remote data sources – including Hadoop, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP ASE), and other databases. And retrieve relevant answers without the cost and effort of migrating data.

Data Integration and Replication: Deliver data from anywhere, when and where it's needed
Maintain business continuity with data that is always available. With SAP HANA data integration capabilities, you can move data across multiple sources and targets to satisfy a host of business needs. Ensure high availability and disaster recovery, make informed decisions based on the latest information, and more.

Our smart data integration technology also provides a single user interface for real-time data replication in batches or in real time. It offers pre-built adapters to common data sources and an SDK adapter that lets you get data from any source – for a 360-degree view of your business. 

Data Quality: Improve data quality and reliability
Deliver accurate, trustworthy data to decision makers – with SAP HANA smart data quality. Manage quality issues across all domains and sources, and cleanse data with SAP HANA. Now you can standardize, validate, and match entities – names, titles, phone numbers, e-mails, and more – to ensure accuracy. You can also use geocoding to enrich address data with location intelligence.

Remote Data Sync: Make your data available remotely
With SAP HANA remote data synchronization, you can bi-directionally synchronize data between SAP HANA and thousands of SAP SQL Anywhere databases – whether embedded in devices or located at the edge of your network. You can make enterprise data available to remote workplaces or locations beyond the reach of high-bandwidth connections. And you can collect and analyze remote data to monitor devices at distant locations – enabling your entire business to be more responsive.

Ask Approyo - What new technical functions are available in SAP HANA 2 compared to the older SAP HANA versions?

Lately, we have talked a lot about SAP HANA 2.0 and how it can impact your company. We are seeing more and more deployments of SAP HANA 2.0 environments across our customers businesses and the impact it is having. And with recent updates like SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 02, now is the time to make the move to SAP HANA 2. What are some of these new functions that can help your business?

The next-generation of SAP’s in-memory platform, SAP HANA 2.0, simplifies database and data management – and makes it easier for application developers to deliver smart, insight-driven apps. The platform’s new capabilities are optimized for innovation and can help your business compete more effectively in the digital economy. And because SAP HANA 2.0 is a continuation of the existing platform, you’ll have access to a stable, highly available, and secure data environment for your applications.

Key SAP HANA 2 features and enhancements to help IT transform include:

• Database management: There are multiple enhancements for high availability and security. For example, the new “active/active read-enabled” option allows IT organizations to leverage secondary systems – previously used only for system replication – to off-load read-intensive workloads for improved operations.
• Data management: The SAP HANA-based Web application SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer allows customers to visualize the impact of new technologies on their architecture before they are implemented. In addition, a tiered storage enhancement allows the distributed storage of data by priority regardless of where it resides. These are two of the many enhancements that have been developed for enterprise modeling, data integration, and data quality.
• Analytical intelligence: SAP HANA 2 is ideally equipped to enable customers to more effectively integrate additional insight obtained by analyzing text, spatial, graph and streaming data into their applications. For example, there are new algorithms in the predictive analytics library for time series, classification, and regression analysis to empower data scientists to discover new patterns and incorporate machine learning into customer applications.
• Application development: Application developers will benefit from enhanced functions for application servers, new development tools, and development languages. In application programming, a new file processor interface enables developers to extract metadata from documents in order to gain newer, deeper insights.

Read the full blog post at www.approyo.com 

SAP Announces HANA 2 in-memory database platform

SAP unveiled SAP HANA 2, the next-generation of the SAP HANA platform. These announcements were made at SAP TechEd Barcelona held on Nov. 8–10.

“SAP pioneered in-memory computing with the launch of SAP HANA in 2010 and throughout our journey we have driven breakthrough innovation on a highly stable core data platform for our customers,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the executive board, Products and Innovation, SAP SE. “The release of SAP HANA 2 marks a milestone in the industry, as it represents the next generation of SAP HANA that will propel customers toward a successful and prosperous digital future.”

SAP HANA 2 is planned to be released to customers on November 30, 2016. The express edition of SAP HANA 2 will be available for delivery shortly after general availability to help organizations jump-start new development projects. As an innovation platform, SAP HANA 2 will deliver technology enhancements twice a year to support agile IT.

What is SAP HANA 2.0?
The next-generation of SAP’s in-memory platform, SAP HANA 2.0, simplifies database and data management – and makes it easier for application developers to deliver smart, insight-driven apps. The platform’s new capabilities are optimized for innovation and can help your business compete more effectively in the digital economy. And because SAP HANA 2.0 is a continuation of the existing platform, you’ll have access to a stable, highly available, and secure data environment for your applications.

Planned new key features and enhancements to help IT transform include:

• Database management: IT organizations will be able to provide business continuity with enhanced high availability, security, workload management and administration enhancements. For example, the new active/active read-enabled option enables IT organizations to leverage secondary systems – previously used only for system replication – to off-load read-intensive workloads for improved operations.
• Data management: Businesses are expected to leverage data, regardless of where it resides, with enhancements to enterprise modeling, data integration, data quality and tiered storage. A new edition of the SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer Web application that works with and is powered by SAP HANA allows IT organizations to manage complex information architectures and visualize the potential impact of new technologies before they are implemented.
• Analytical intelligence: Developers are embedding rich insight into applications with enhanced analytical processing engines for text, spatial, graph and streaming data. For example, new algorithms for classification, association, time series and regression have been added to the predictive analytics library to empower data scientists to discover new patterns and incorporate machine learning into custom applications.
• Application development: Developers are expected to build and deploy next-generation applications with enhanced functions for application servers, development tools and languages. For example, bring-your-own-language support provides a choice of additional third-party build packs and runtimes that can be used within SAP HANA extended application services, advanced model. Also, a new file processor API enables developers to extract text and metadata from documents to deliver deeper insights.

Are you ready to experience the next version of SAP HANA?
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