Iulia Bicu

When using SAP HANA, you can calculate the outcome of your business directly, on the original data, in the main memory, without any need to transfer the data. Many of these calculations can be graphically modeled as special data views in SAP HANA Studio, without the need of any supplementary code. This paper focuses on the options that SAP HANA makes available for data modeling. These options lie at the core of the development process which produces HANA applications. The business data of a given field are memorized (usually in a normalized format) in tables from the database, which are connected via a foreign key (the so-called entity-relationship model). With the help of this data model, unique registrations can easily be made, selected or modified. Nevertheless, if the access to the data becomes more dynamic and complex, or if certain analyses or checks are necessary, the data needs to be transformed.

This paper presents the options available in SAP HANA for text search and analysis. These options relate to the numerous ways in which the HANA platform can be used, especially in business applications, which have not been equipped with these types of functions before. The SAP HANA platform offers the users the possibility to search and visualize the content of the tables with the same simplicity as an Internet search does. The text search function entails a certain tolerance for errors (fuzzy search) as well as the processing of multilingual terms and synonyms. One possible example is filling in the value “buenes eires tele” in a field, and finding the correct value despite the faulty spelling, by searching the value across several columns. Nevertheless, the users cannot always easily determine if the result is the expected one, the correct one, within the fuzzy search context which tolerates errors. Have you ever wondered why you get unexpected results when you search for something on the web?