Schrödinger's cat

The physicist and science theorist Erwin Schrödinger is one of the founders of quantum mechanics and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. For an explanation of the divergence of classical physics from quantum physics, he used a thought experiment. Quanta elude our usual horizon of experience.

Schrödinger's cat sits in a box and the probability that it will die is exactly 50 percent. A physical apparatus also in the box observes a radioactive atom and its probability of decaying within an hour is those 50 percent. The decay would trigger a chain reaction at the end of which the cat must die - so never buy a cat in a bag, see illustration.

The thought experiment is based on the probability of an expected event. Until we open the box and look, i.e. measure, our cat is theoretically 50 percent alive and equally dead - due to the probability of the radioactive atom decaying. So much for quantum physics. In purely practical terms, of course, the poor cat is 100 percent one or the other.

Hana is dead. I don't mean the product end of the database, because the Hana platform is still needed for the S/4 release. No one gets bright eyes, an excited voice and a rising pulse when the Hana database is mentioned.

Hana is alive, albeit for very different reasons: no S/4 release switch without Hana! A recent survey from Switzerland shows that about 40 percent of existing customers have already switched to Hana - probably in preparation for S/4 and thus more by force than voluntarily. The enthusiasm for this innovation by Professor Hasso Plattner is modest, resulting in my observation: Everyone loves Hana (inevitably), but no one wants to marry it!

The quantum physicist would now say that Hana is in a superposition - in a superposition state between alive and dead. As long as the box with the cat from Schrödinger's thought experiment is not opened, the cat is 50 percent dead and 50 percent alive. We have not yet measured whether Hana has a chance of survival. We haven't opened the box yet! Of course, the poor cat can take only one of both states and cannot possess several states at the same time like a quantum object, see also double-slit experiment.

In real life there is no superposition like in quantum physics. Schrödinger's cat is not an animal torture, but remains a thought experiment. With the missing Hana roadmap, however, SAP is torturing its existing customers, who have to live in a kind of superposition.

Existing customers have to pay license fees for AnyDB, i.e. IBM DB2, Oracle or MS-SQL server, and Hana at the same time during the release upgrade. The ERP system to be transformed has two states: AnyDB and Hana. It is not a matter of choice, but a technical necessity that a single release change can possibly be completed during a weekend, but that a holistic release change for an ERP landscape consisting of many ECC systems can also take several years. During this period, both database systems - the old AnyDB and the new Hana - must be available in parallel.

Officially, there is no answer to this DB superposition from SAP Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Müller. There is no Hana roadmap for the S/4 transformation. Unofficially, SAP is waiving the license fee during the transition period. For this, however, the existing SAP customer must be well equipped with licensing knowledge and negotiate with maximum confidentiality - it is worth it to avoid buying a pig in a poke.