9 Text, Spatial, and Predictive Modeling

Techniques You’ll Master


Now that you understand the basics of SAP HANA information modeling, it’s time to take your knowledge to the next level. In this chapter, we will cover three different topics: text, spatial, and predictive modeling. These three topics are independent from each other but can be combined in projects; for an example, see the Real-World Scenario box.

We’ll begin our discussion with text modeling—specifically, how to search and find text even if the user misspells it, how to analyze text to find sentiment, and how to mine text in documents. Next, we’ll discuss spatial processing and how to combine business data with maps. Finally, we’ll look at how to build a predictive analysis model for business users.

Real-World Scenario

You are working on an SAP HANA project at a pharmaceutical company. The company has created a mobile web application with SAP HANA for its sales representatives. However, users are struggling to find products on their mobile phones, because the keyboard is small and the names of the pharmaceutical products are quite difficult to type correctly. Therefore, you implement a fuzzy text search, via which users type roughly what they want, and the SAP HANA system finds the correct products. The company later tells you that this also helped users avoid adding duplicate entries into the system.

You improve this mobile application by suggesting products to the sales reps. You create a predictive analysis model in SAP HANA to help with their sales forecasting by looking at the seasonal patterns to determine when people use certain products more—for example, in the winter.

You also notice that there were many comments about the company’s products on Facebook and Twitter. You process these comments in SAP HANA and can quickly tell the marketing department which products people are talking about—and alert the company if people are making negative comments about any product. You provide special alerts to the sales reps to inform the customers about these products.

You finally add some what-if map-based analytics to the mobile app so that sales reps can change the areas where they are working and see the impact on their projected sales figures.

And of course, you win the “Best Employee” award for the year!

Objectives of This Portion of the Test

The purpose of this portion of the SAP HANA certification exam is to test your knowledge of the SAP HANA modeling tools.

The certification exam expects you to have a good understanding of the following topics:

[»] Note

This portion contributes up to 10% of the total certification exam score.