Other Sources of Information

You will find that there is no shortage of information about SAP HANA. In fact, there is so much information available that it’s almost impossible to get through it all! To help focus your search, let’s look at some of the most popular sources of information.

SAP Help

SAP Help (http://help.sap.com) is a valuable resource for your SAP and SAP HANA education. There is a lot of great documentation provided on this website. At http://help.sap.com/hana_platform, you will see all available documentation provided in PDF format (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 SAP HANA Documentation on SAP Help

Figure 2.1 SAP HANA Documentation on SAP Help

Useful PDF files include the following:

For some of these documents, it might be helpful to have an actual system to play with, because some guides provide step-by-step instructions for certain actions. We discuss how to access a system in the Hands-On with SAP HANA section.

hana.sap.com and SAP Community Network

The main website for SAP HANA is http://hana.sap.com/, which offers the latest news about SAP HANA and its different use cases. Startup companies that wish to develop solutions on the SAP HANA platform can join the SAP HANA Startup Forum here.

SAP Community Network (SCN) provides a central location for members of different SAP communities and solution users. At http://scn.sap.com/community/hana-in-memory, you can ask questions about your own SAP HANA system. Many SAP employees will answer questions posted on this website.

SAP HANA Academy

From http://hana.sap.com/, you can find a link to the SAP HANA Academy; clicking it takes you directly to YouTube. The SAP HANA Academy area of YouTube provides hundreds of free video tutorials on all topic areas of SAP HANA. You can also access it directly via www.youtube.com/user/saphanaacademy/playlists? view=1&flow=grid&sort=lad. Figure 2.2 shows the main screen for SAP HANA Academy.

Figure 2.2 SAP HANA Academy at YouTube

Figure 2.2 SAP HANA Academy at YouTube

SAP employees who perform actual tasks on an SAP HANA system make these videos. If you’ve never made a backup of an SAP HANA system, for example, you can search for a video on how to do just that, with step-by-step instructions.

Because there are so many video clips available, we recommend that you select the Playlists option from the YouTube menu. In the dropdown, just below this menu, select Created Playlists. Then, from the dropdown menu on the right side, select Last Added To. Alternately, go to the URL provided previously to see the latest video clips at the top. This is useful when a new SAP HANA SPS is released, for example, and you want to find out about the new features it brings to SAP HANA.

With each new SAP HANA release, new videos are added to the SAP HANA Academy YouTube channel—so if you’re really bored this weekend and you don’t know what to do with all your time, you can watch a few hours of SAP HANA video clips!

You can also find videos on SAP HANA Academy for building solutions. On the Playlists page, when you scroll down, you will see a section called Building Solutions. This is shown in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3 Playlists for Building Solutions

Figure 2.3 Playlists for Building Solutions

You will now see about nine different series for building a solution. In Figure 2.4, we have selected the Live2 series, which helps you to build a social network solution with SAP HANA.

Figure 2.4 Guided Learning on SAP HANA Academy

Figure 2.4 Guided Learning on SAP HANA Academy

Some of these series will be using older support packs of SAP HANA. You can always adapt the learning to the latest techniques discussed in this book. For example, instead of using analytic views, you will use calculation views of type cube with star join.

As noted earlier, the http://help.sap.com website provides all the PDFs for you to read, which is great if you like reading and you want the PDFs on your tablet or phone, for example. On the other hand, the SAP HANA Academy YouTube channel is good if you prefer visual learning, and it may be more practical.

openSAP and openHPI

The next websites for you to explore are https://open.sap.com/ (openSAP; see Figure 2.5) and https://open.hpi.de/ (openHPI). The openHPI website provides a good training course on SAP HANA by Hasso Plattner, and the openSAP website provides many free training courses on a large variety of SAP topics.

These websites frequently add new online training courses, of which some focus on SAP HANA. When new training courses become available, you can enroll in them. Every week, you will receive a few video clips. These courses are normally four to six weeks long, and every week you will take a test. All the tests together are worth 50% of your total score. In the last week, you take an exam, which is worth the other 50% of your score. At the end of the course, you receive a certificate of attendance, and if you performed well, the certificate will show your score. If appropriate, the certificate will also show that you were in the top 10% or top 20% of your class.

[»] Note

These openSAP certificates do not hold the same weight as the official SAP Education certifications!

Figure 2.5 openSAP Website

Figure 2.5 openSAP Website

After you complete one of these free online courses, you cannot retake the tests or exams, but you can still access all of the other course materials. You can always download the video clips, the PowerPoint slides, and the transcripts for your records.

[+] Tip

We recommend a series of SAP HANA development courses presented by Thomas Jung, including a new course available specifically for SAP HANA SPS 11. You can find the Software Development on SAP HANA (Delta SPS 11) course at https://open.sap.com/courses/hana4. Many of the courses on openSAP focus on SAP HANA. While these courses do not focus on modeling, some of them are excellent complementary training. At https://open.sap.com/courses you can see a list of available courses.