Nearline storage - data growth under control

With the PBS solutions, SAP BW users can move data from the BW primary database to a nearline database (DB) or an archive in order to counteract uncontrolled data growth in the BW primary DB.

In this way, license and storage costs for BW operation in traditional and Hana environments can be reduced. Actian Vector, IBM DB2 Blu or SAP IQ can be used as a nearline DB.

The data can still be analyzed as usual. As a practical addition to the SAP NLS solution, PBS developed the CBW add-on for SAP NLS, which can be used both in traditional BW environments, with or without Unicode, as well as after a subsequent Hana migration.

It facilitates the Hana migration, as primary or nearline databases do not have to be converted to Unicode before the migration and nearline data does not have to be migrated.

The use of the new nearline storage variant essentially makes sense in the following three scenarios.

Scenario 1 new

The SAP customer is still operating its BW system with a traditional database and is planning to migrate to BW on Hana at a later date. He wants to downsize the BW database before the Hana migration in order to minimize the migration effort and the associated costs.

The customer has already acquired a license for the nearline database SAP IQ as part of the Hana licensing. However, the customer cannot use the SAP NLS solution in the legacy system due to release dependencies such as non-Unicode, which would mean that SAP NLS could only be used after the switch to Hana.

This is where the new Nearline Storage Update from PBS comes in: With CBW for SAP NLS, SAP IQ can also be used as a nearline database in BW environments in which SAP NLS cannot be used for release-related reasons (non-Unicode, low BW release status).

In the legacy system, the PBS add-on uses the specially developed JDBC DB interface to connect IQ to the BW system. Many PBS customers have been using this interface for many years. After the switch to Hana, SAP's own database driver ODBC is used.

The nearline data in the legacy system is generated in an SAP NLS-compatible format. With this functionality, BW data in the legacy system can be archived in SAP IQ and read and processed directly with SAP NLS after the conversion of the primary database to Hana, without migrating the IQ data.

In addition, numerous additional functions that have been tried and tested over many years, such as snapshots for performance optimization, PSA archiving, data aging, monitoring and much more, are also available in the Hana environment.

Scenario 2

The customer has already migrated to SAP BW on Hana and uses or plans to use the SAP NLS solution to reduce the data in the BW database and thus save license costs.

He has already acquired an IQ license from SAP. With CBW for SAP NLS, he has the option of using the following PBS functions to optimize nearline operations:

• Query performance optimization through PBS snapshots
• Automatic generation of data archiving processes
• Automatic generation of process chains for nearline activities
• PSA archiving with Nearline or ADK
• Data aging for nearline data
• Data extraction from database, nearline database or archive for tax audits
• Efficient nearline monitoring
• Migration functionality to replace other nearline solutions
• Third-party system access to nearline data
• Utilities for query performance optimization with nearline access

Scenario 3

SAP customers who operate their BW system under a traditional database and also want to use SAP NLS can benefit in particular. However, they must take the corresponding release dependencies into account (see corresponding SAP notes).

With CBW for SAP NLS, you can take advantage of all the PBS optimizations listed above. The SAP IQ database is connected exclusively with the SAP database driver ODBC.

Conclusion

The CBW add-on for SAP NLS is a powerful supplementary solution for SAP BW customers who want to use SAP's own nearline solution.

The add-on facilitates a BW migration to the Hana platform and also offers numerous additional functions that optimize Hana operations.