Expert Level SAP HANA Interview Questions and Answers

Q21. What are the different compression techniques in HANA?

Ans: Different types of compression techniques in available in SAP HANA are:

Run-length encoding

Cluster encoding

Dictionary encoding

Prefix encoding

Indirect encoding

Sparse encoding

Q22. Can user always upgrade SAP HANA directly, even if there is a significant difference between the
source and the target level?

Answer: We can upgrade SAP HANA from any source level to any target level without an intermediate
step. But there are some exceptions :

Source level with SPS2 or below

Exceptions mentioned explicitly in the related (Example: SAP HANA SPS 08 Database Revision 80)

Q23. What Is Sap Hana 1.5, 1.2 Or 1.0 Sp03?

Answer :

They are all the same thing, and 1.0 SP03 is touted to be the final name which should go into Ramp Up
(beta) in Q4 2011. This allows any SAP Net Weaver BW 7.3 Data Warehouse to be migrated into a HANA
appliance. HANA 1.0 SP03 specifically also accelerates BW calculations and planning, which means even
more performance gains can be attained.

Q24. What is SLT(SAP Landscape Transformation) in SAP HANA?

Ans: The full form of SLT is SAP Landscape Transformation which is nothing but a trigger based
replication. It is the replication technology to pass the data from the source system to the target system.
Here the source can be either SAP or non-SAP whereas the Target system is SAP HANA system which
contains HANA database.

Q25. What is the difference between Catalog and Content tab?

Ans:

Catalog −This contains RDBMS objects like schemas, tables, views, procedures, etc. You can open SQL
editor and design database objects.

Content −This is used to maintain design time repository. You can create new packages and design
Information views in HANA system. Various views can be created under content tab to meet business
requirement and to perform analytical reports on the top of the Modeling views.

Q26. Define Latency in SAP HANA ?

Ans: Latency is the length of time to replicate data (a table entry) from the source system to the target
system

Q27. Which Information view in SAP HANA is used to implement star schema queries?

Answer: Analytic View

Q28. What are Transformation rules?

Ans: Transformation rule is a rule specified in the Advanced Replication settings transaction for source
tables such a way that the data is transformed during the replication process. For example one can
specify rule to Convert fields, Fill empty fields and Skip records.

Q29. What hardware is supported in SAP HANA right now?

Ans: All of the major vendors e.g. HP, IBM, Dell, are offering HANA now. Technically HANA will run on
any Intel x64 based system from your laptop through to the big 40-core, 2TB RAM servers. It is however
only supported on a small number of big rack-mount servers like the Dell R910 and HP DL980.
Q30. How you can connect SAP HANA to Microsoft Excel?

Ans: MDX Provider is used to connect MS Excel to SAP HANA database system. It provides driver to
connect HANA system to Excel and is further used for data modelling. You can use Microsoft Office Excel
2010/2013 for connectivity with HANA for both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows.