And there we are! We've taken a look at most of the features and functionalities of the SAP HANA system from a development perspective. You now possess the tools necessary to build your own database models, and integrate these in reporting software for your users to be able to analyze the data. You can create a simple XS Engine application, and you know where to look to see what other functions the XS Engine provides, especially if you want or need to use the SAPUI5 toolkit.

Where you go from here really depends on you. SAP HANA is a powerful system, allowing us to do data analysis work a lot faster than was ever possible in other systems. Switching a database from any given vendor to SAP HANA will see immediate gains, even if you don't change the data model. If, however, you spend some time building attribute and analytic views, calculation views on your data, you'll see even more speedups.

Whether you use SAP HANA as a database in its own right or just as the underlying data store for a SAP BW or ERP system, you now understand how development done at the database level can have positive impact in the application layer. Remember that the basic principle behind the SAP HANA system is to push as much calculation and workload as possible right down to the database layer, in order to limit the amount of data transiting across the network, and to avoid post-processing in your application (be it SAP's ABAP, an XS Engine application, or something else).

It is important to correctly define your data model, and to carefully design your SQL statements, just as with any other database. If your SQL requires that the entire database be read just to discover one figure or two, even the high speed of SAP HANA will not be enough to save your application!

Of course the question remains; what do we do with this extra speed? It's not just about getting information to your users faster, it's about what they can do with that data once they have it. Remember that all the work that we do as developers and consultants, only serves to enable our users to do their jobs faster, better and more efficiently.

Good luck making your users' jobs faster, better and more efficient with SAP HANA!

Mark Walker, June 2013