Pandora's Box

The SAP world has looked different since last fall: Hana has received version number 2 and the release changes are turning into a nightmare. Pandora's box has been opened!

Older semesters in the SAP community still remember the first release of the Microsoft SQL Server for R/3 - a disaster.

SAP experts flew to Microsoft headquarters in Seattle. There were telephone conferences that lasted for hours. On both sides of the Atlantic, the SQL server code was frantically analyzed.

Errors were found. Misunderstandings between SAP and Microsoft cleared up. After several restarts, there was another stable database for existing R/3 customers.

And Hana?

According to Hasso Plattner and SAP, from the first moment Hana was stable in real time and robust enough for every conceivable ERP task - a miracle happened:

Every computer scientist knows that software also needs a maturing process. Accordingly, new applications have version numbers with a zero in front of the dot; Hana started without all the trimmings and surprised everyone at the end of last year with a 2 after the product name.

Now the disaster took its course. Is it possible to switch from Hana to Hana 2? In principle, no problem, provided the ERP system has the correct version number. The prerequisite for a Hana release change is Enhancement Package (EhP) 7 - according to SAP.

But then came the big "but" and SAP specified that the migration to Hana 2 is only possible with EhP 7.49. A disappointment, because only very few in the community are that far along.

Hana projects were postponed, put on hold and cancelled. SAP had to react and wrote in an SAP Note that Pandora's Box is now generally supported with EhP 7 after all - they just need some more time for the necessary tests.

Everyone understands that testing has to be done, but no one understands the communication chaos. By the time you, dear reader, have this July/August issue in front of you, SAP should also have completed their testing and general availability for Hana 2 on EhP 7 should exist.

The problem:

Initially a database product, later a platform, Hana was primarily a political tool together with Intel against the rest of the IT world. The primary goal was to slow down Oracle and IBM.

But the world is much more complex than they are obviously willing to imagine in Walldorf. Oracle and IBM also have in-memory computing technology, and Intel's processors need not be the best basis for in-memory computing databases.

Politically, SAP tried every trick in the book to prevent Hana on IBM power. In the opinion of the Walldorf-based company, the successful duo had to be "SAP and Intel.

By now, the entire SAP community knows that Hana on Power is the better solution. Intel is watching and losing market share, but that's another story.