The SAP HANA Career Guide – Part 3, SAP HANA Performance Consultant

Hopefully you have enjoyed the SAP HANA Career Guide so far. This piece focusses in on the SAP HANA Performance Consultant.

In the early implementations of SAP HANA, this was by far the most popular type of resource. SAP HANA Enterprise comes with a set of tools including SAP HANA Studio, which contains the SAP HANA Modeller and the SAPScript programming language (which is similar to PL-SQL).

The SAP HANA Performance Consultant takes requirements and builds data models, including the virtual Analytical views and Calculation Views that make SAP HANA special, and builds the SQLScript and CE Function programming code to meet the needs.

Where do SAP HANA Performance Consultants come from?

Whilst building simple SAP HANA models is something that almost anyone with knowledge of Microsoft Access can do, the SQLScript language and CE Functions are technical languages that require a sound programming understanding. Those familiar with programming stored procedures in RDBMS systems like DB2, Oracle PL/SQL and Microsoft Procedural SQL will find themselves at home quickly.

Similarly those familiar with the SAP BW Data Warehouse may find themselves out of there depth here. Those SAP BW consultants familiar with writing complex transformation and update rule code in the ABAP and OpenSQL programming languages may find SAP HANA Enterprise comes naturally – especially those with a technical background and degree. Those who are more business focussed and less technical would be best advised to focus on the SAP BW on HANA consultant.

How do you cross-train from PL-SQL to SQLScript?

The programming languages are fairly similar and any SQL developer will be able to familiarise themselves very quickly by referring to the SQLScript Guide. Note that this guide is updated every 6 months with major amendments, when new releases of SAP HANA are made.

How do I get hands-on with SAP HANA?

The best way to cross-train is to get hands on and build data models. Thankfully the lovely folks at SAP have made this really easy. There is a 30-day free developer version of HANA in the cloud available in the HANA developer center. After that, you pay by usage of the Amazon AWS HANA system – the SAP HANA software itself is free to use for test purposes.

In addition, the SAP HANA Distinguished Engineers are building out a collection of fantastic learning videos that take you through each of the SAP HANA concepts and get you up and running fast. This will be called the HANA Academy and is coming soon – I will post details as soon as they are available. In the meantime there is a YouTube video with the content.

What classroom training is available?

SAP offers a good basic training guide called HA300 as a 5-day course. If you learn best in a classroom environment and can afford the €2500 cost (plus expenses) and time out, then this might be a good option.

Be aware that this course is typically out of date: SAP HANA moves very quickly and classroom education struggles to keep up.

Where can I go to ask questions?

There are two great places for this. First there are the SCN SAP HANA and in-Memory forums, where you can ask technical questions about all things SAP HANA. Response times are excellent.

Second, you can go to the Experience SAP HANA Discussion area, where there is a similar focus on assistance.