SAP Vs Oracle
This debate of SAP Vs Oracle or last 2 yrs buzz SAP HANA vs Oracle Exalytics
Every year in Enterprise Software space Competition of SAP Vs Oracle Hots up with new announcements and New technology comparisons of SAP new Tech Vs Oracle New Tech.
The Enterprise Software stack built up by No.1 and No.2 world’s top most valued companies in Enterprise Technology Space.
So SAP Vs Oracle comparison will never go out of picture only every year it will up the ante
How Oracle Exadata and SAP HANA similar?
First, they are both are appliances – bundles of hardware and software and services that give you something that will run out the box. This means that the 3 elements: hardware, software and tuning – are highly optimised to work together.
Second, they are both initially optimised for Data Warehousing scenarios.
Third, both scale more or less linearly for large datasets.
SAP HANA more detailed:
Databases as we see earlier evolved from file based systems to Row oriented (RDBMS ) databases. to Column Oriented databases like SAP HANA (http://blogs.sap.com/SAPHANA/),that stores its content by column rather than by row.This has advantages for data warehouses and library catalogues where aggregates are computed over large numbers of similar data items. But what about OLTP Systems we are told that remove layers and everything in memory and it is not disruptive.But Still there are probabilitic databases which are advanced then column oriented databases.but are under evolution..
SAP HANA Architecture: why is distruptive? what problem does it solves?:
Normal Web App architerture : Portal linked to ESB which is taking to multiple Web Apps(these Apps have there own databases).Then We have ETL taking all these delta loads to EDW.Ontop of EDW we have multiple Analytical Apps. There are 3 problem in this design:
1. Problem #1: There is always Delta between App and EDW.Also Delta between App.
2.Problem #2: Since Delta between App and Analytic App decisions are delayed or misrepresented by delta leading delay in Actions.
3. Problem #3: Value in App T1 > value in Analytic App T2.
Solution presented By HANA:
1. For All events happening in databases like any changes should trigger event . Called Complex Event Processing CEP. It will collect and process all events.These changes also needs to replicated quickly to other associated events databases..hence Sybase Replication Server comes handy.
2. Replace Application databases and EDW databases with Single in memory DB (inside RAM).And One Archival database.All App and Analytical App point to In-Memory DB hence there is no Delta between them.With these 2 changes above problems are solved by HANA.
Some time back , Bob Evans from SAP wrote a blog entitled The Top 10 Reasons SAP HANA Is Disrupting Larry Ellison’s Grand Plans.
Link: http://blogs.sap.com/bobevans/2011/06/23/the-top-10-reasons-sap-hana-is-disrupting-larry-ellison%E2%80%99s-grand-plans/
How are Oracle Exadata and SAP HANA fundamentally different?
Oracle Exadata is a cell based Oracle appliance. This means that an Exadata Appliance is made up of multiple Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, each of which handles a workload, and part of a response set. So you ask a question of Exadata and the central node chunks stuff up and the Storage Servers crunch out responses. The node compiles those responses into an overall response.
SAP HANA is an in-Memory Appliance. It does break up responses if you have multiple nodes just like Exadata, but that’s not really the point. The point is that even with a single HANA node, you can get blistering performance from a reporting query, because it performs the calculation in main memory.
HANA has an application layer that sits with the In-Memory Database. This is the killer blow because the first native app is a calculation engine. This means it can do complex calculations without an application layer, which massively improves application performance.
So the key here is that whilst Exadata remains a database, SAP are pushing HANA as an application platform – and with good reason.
SAP new version come with (netweaver,BI,ABAP,Java). Enterprise workspaces into portal.
SAP improvements : In 2011 we had following changes:
Stack Vs Non Stack: War of Words
Semantic layer can handle (universes,dimensional data and multi-dimensional data, integrated to netweaver (people integration,data integration, process integration)(includes identity/lifecycle management) event processing, 16 clients report flavour together into single design time.But is not netweaver developed on Java open source platform.But going forward its with Oracle.Is SAP going to pay royality on everything it create over it? Where do we go from here?. History: SAP worked withIBM to put away its default databases on vanilla install from Oracle to IBM DB2. then came new installer for vanilla install IBM+SAP products. Is is not stackized approach? Still it not how open source or collaborative source software are based.
2. Then SAP long back came with announcement that we are doing away with dependency of Java..and came BSP to take over at-least JSP.but where does it stands about open Systems like Java eco-systems where we have community system.Does Any SAP tech has ecosystem. If there is no eco-system will system evolve..that’s where Oracle has taken leap faith.A community can create and breed new technology or a closed wall announcements.My take is SAP customers are more traditional enterprises that have long relationships with the existing ERP platform and appreciate stable upgrade paths, maintenance and support to keep operations running smoothly.
3.HANA: HANA(http://blogs.sap.com/SAPHANA/) can process both structured , unstructured, machine generated and also Social networking data. So is Hadoop which uses the strategy of bringing the computation to the data instead of transferring the data for computation thus reducing the network delay and further running Map reduce algorithms over the data. (http://developer.yahoo.com/hadoop/ )Hadoop doesn’t suit for interactive data processing.SAP HANA focuses at interactive or realtime analytics whereas Big Data processing technologies like Hadoop which is an open source and deals with petabytes and exabytes and is not realtime based.Mere realtime examples are analyzing the logs generated by web servers of enterprises and Facebook or Linked-In data which generates hundreds of terabytes data across world everyday. But this can be analyzed with any other data warehousing tool.
CRM: Customers will be interested in running data analytics against increasing amounts of data stored in both SAP and non-SAP systems. Hence mostly they do not employ researchers or data scientists to experiment with still developing technologies like Hadoop for distributed computing and Big Data analytics.
Finally according to me HANA is not about Bigdata but more about quick or fast data for all its customers to make quicker, better business decisions to stay ahead of the competition and hence puts SAP in a good position to expand its analytics business.But we will look further is it really able to reduce layers.
Oracle Exadata:SAP certified for exadata:
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/turkcell-1-exadata-case-study-456284.pdf
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata-database-machine/overview/index.html?origref=http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=oracle%20exadata&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2Fus%2Fexadata%2Findex.html&ei=hAu0TovnOsPQrQf5-9C-Aw&usg=AFQjCNEU0irinR_Il-5Ehwy7x2lFDXz7yg
Important Question While considering SAP HANA:
1) Cost benefit analysis :Whilst true the cost of hardware (memory / CPU) keeps decreasing and how much do you think you will be spending to deliver a system 3600x faster than your current one? Its the usual cost to benefit comparison.
2) HANA is underpinned by solid state storage / this can be raided etc for redundancy. HANA offers snapshot backups for recovery / HA / DR purposes. In its current version although it has a log capability (similar to transaction log/archive log), this log does not offer a backup option so “point in time recovery” is only available locally. ie in a disaster you could only recover to the most recent snapshot. It is for this reason (and probably others) that SAP is only focussing on it’s use in warehouse type scenarios (eg BW7.3x is to run on HANA) where it is not the database of record. In the upcoming versions when some of these enterprise database facilities are deployed then SAP I’m guessing will offer HANA as the DB for it’s operational applications (ERP / CRM etc).
4. Sybase: Mission critical financial application and mobility.Tech talks about stack-less future of heterogeneity.
-Hana comes with columar database not the latest probalistic databases.
Watch youngest india head ever presenting SAP Teched in india.