Book Review: SAP HANA 2.0, an Introduction

SAP HANA 2.0, an Introduction [ISBN 978-1-4932-1838-7 (print), 978-1-4932-1839-4 (e-book), 978-1-4932-1840-0 (print and e-book)], by Denys van Kempen provides a complete and well-organized view of the SAP HANA platform. First launched as an in-memory database in 2010, HANA is nearly a teenager and has made lots of changes over the past decade. I was surprised while reading the book at how much of my HANA product knowledge was obsolete, mostly due to the way SAP has a way of renaming and retiring products as well as introducing new ones.

After presenting a thorough technical overview in Chapters 1 & 2, the author devotes seven chapters to unique personas that will interact with the HANA platform: administration, application development, advanced analytics, security, data integration, data architecture, and data center architecture. While it’s entirely possible that you, like me, will be required to function as more than one persona, it’s unlikely that your organization will be successful with SAP HANA if only one person is expected to be all seven personas.

The author says it best:

“Using personas [to organize the book] also safeguards against the constant change inherent in the software industry. By the time this book is in the online store, new features will have been added, product names may have been changed (again), and older components may no longer be supported. What’s unlikely to change any time soon, however, are the roles of developers and administrators.”

Denys van Kempen, SAP HANA 2.0: An Introduction

Regardless of your role using the SAP HANA platform, this book provides a solid introduction to the platform as a whole and illuminates what topics you should master based on your persona. As for me, I am both a hands-on practitioner as well as a manager of other, better-qualified hands-on practitioners. Having an understanding of the full platform as well as the key responsibilities of each persona is going to be invaluable to me making HANA a success for organizations that rely on it.

There are over 10,000 freely-available pages of HANA documentation available from SAP. So you might ask yourself why do you need a book if there’s so much free information? This book and its author provide an experienced guide – somebody who can keep you safely on the right trail and out of pitfalls as you climb the HANA mountain.

The book concludes with a chapter on Training and Support. As you would expect from a now 10-year-old platform, there are many free and paid options to get your team the education they need to be effective.

If you’re in IT management, this may be the only book about HANA that you’ll need to read. I guarantee you’ll be asking your team hard questions after reading to insure the HANA platform is managed well in your organization. For serious HANA practitioners such as administrators or developers, this won’t be your last HANA book. But it should definitely be the first.

I especially recommend the ebook or hardcover/ebook combination. Whether you read the book on Adobe Reader, Kindle, or a tablet, you’ll be able to utilize your device’s search functionality to quickly refresh your memory.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”