Something always sticks!

More than a year ago, SAP Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert hinted at the possibility of a retread in a telephone press conference. This far-reaching renovation process was immediately denied by SAP's press office, but something always sticks.

The Hana family tree is complex. Now some media outlets believe they know a whistleblower who suspects he has found copyright infringement in the Hana code. The information about this is nebulous - the soup is thin - and SAP's communication is not very enlightening.

Whether third-party code has found its way into Hana and whether existing rights have been infringed cannot be verified at the current state of knowledge.

The fact is that neither the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) at the University of Potsdam nor Professor Plattner, nor SAP through former Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka and current Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert, have provided a complete Hana database pedigree.

Shortly after it became known that Hana saw the light of day at HPI, it also became known that the research program there runs under the name SanssouciDB - obviously a communication error. Sanssouci?

Not that Hana isn't a worry - the technology is complex, the sales figures far below expectations. But the story with HPI in Potsdam and the nearby Sanssouci Palace was too good to be denied.

What applies: Hana consists of several database engines. A listing does not exist. What is known is that in the belly of Hana are the SAP text search engine Trex, parts from the open source database MaxDB, some from the in-memory computing database of APO (SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization), probably some code from Sybase ASE/IQ and the database engine P*Time from South Korea (bought in 2005).

Why the exact pedigree and additives of Hana were never accurately enumerated and described is not known. Addressed about a possible copyright abuse, Professor Hasso Plattner opened a new perspective: Not SanssouciDB, but Hyrise was the name of his Hana research project at HPI.

Hyrise is a main memory hybrid storage engine. Two PDF white papers can be found quickly using Google; Hasso Plattner is a co-author of both, and Dr. Alexander Zeier, a former HPI employee and now Accenture manager, is also a co-author of one.

Something always sticks: Whether the former SAP auditor really found copyright infringement in the Hana code will be clarified by the German and American courts.

However, given the large number of mothers and fathers, it is highly likely that Hana also has dark sides to it. What would be desirable for the SAP community is open, active and transparent communication by SAP - or is there something to hide?

Mr. Plattner, Mr. Zeier, Mr. Leukert, we are waiting for answers.