Important Terminology

In this chapter, we covered the following important topics:

• Architecture and performance
  We started this chapter by reviewing the architecture design principles of SAP HANA and how everything contributes to optimal system performance. We also summarized some of the best practices you’ve already learned in your information modeling journey.
• Explain Plan
  The Explain Plan tool shows the different engines used by SAP HANA to execute a query, along with a list of operators.
• Visualize Plan
  The Visualize Plan tool shows graphical flows for both the prepared and the executed plans. We can see the number of records returned per operator in the prepared plan and the number of records along with the time each step of the query took in the executed plan. We can also combine the graphical flow with a timeline and an operator list.
• Administration Console
  The Administration Console provides access to the SQL cache of all SQL statements previously run in the SAP HANA system. We can also create and read trace files for identifying exactly what happens in the SAP HANA system when a query is executed.
• Performance Analysis Mode
  The Performance Analysis Mode provides suggestions while we are designing a view to potentially improve performance. This tool looks, for example, at join types, referential integrity, cardinality, and partitioning.
• Best practices
  Finally, we looked at some best practices for ensuring that SAP HANA information models perform optimally.