Hana 1, 2 or 3

Maybe the existing customers just misunderstood everything: 2025 is not the deadline for AnyDB (DB2, Oracle and SQL Server), but the completion of the database Hana - Final Release 2025!

At the beginning, Professor Hasso Plattner and former Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka promised continuous improvement. Version numbers were not planned for Hana. Bertolt

Brecht would now say: "Yes, just make a plan! Just be a big light! And then make a second plan; they both won't work!"

A few years ago, Hana 2 was presented to the SAP community. Now the question for every customizing is: Hana 1 or 2?

Connoisseurs of SAP's database problems are already talking about Hana 3 and expect this version at the turn of the year. Why? As an in-memory computing database, Hana is a stroke of genius by Professor Plattner, but it is also an eternal construction site. Numerous SAP service notes testify to a very lively Hana development, where fatal errors and kernel panics are not uncommon.

In the beginning, there was the idea of a real-time ERP, i.e. a new ECC, ERP Central Component, which responds almost without delay. However, a real-time ERP/ECC primarily required a new database.

Secondarily, SAP also had to rationalize away numerous Abap tables for the new ECC - but that's another story, at the end of which there will be S/4.

A real-time ERP needs an in-memory computing database: the birth of Hana. What quickly took shape at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam and in the IT labs in Walldorf was ingenious.

A new database class was created here. Here, new computer science territory was entered. A database revolution was in the offing. And SAP destroyed and undid it all!

Hana was promised to SAP's existing customers far too quickly. Hana was still a prototype, still in the beta phase, and already license agreements were being signed and revenue targets defined.

Even five years before an absolute deadline, Hana is still not market-ready and enterprise-ready. Of course, there are thousands of Hana installations, but they are running more badly than well, if you take a look at the numerous SAP notes.

Now Intel and SAP have created a new memory class for Hana: Persistent Memory. This memory retains its content even in the event of a power failure, is cheaper than dram, almost as fast and can be packed higher.

What does that mean?

Future Hana servers will no longer suffer from Alzheimer's disease during power interruptions, will be less expensive and will be able to have even larger main memory capacities. It doesn't get any better than that!

But Hana servers with persistent memory are still in the development stage. Extensive tests will follow. Mass production for the SAP community is only in the planning stage. Better things will come, but it will still take time.

But SAP legacy customers don't have that time, because 2025 is a hard break for AnyDB. By then, every existing SAP customer should (must?) have switched to Hana, whether the database is ready or not.