SAP S/4HANA Overview

What is SAP S/4HANA?

SAP S/4HANA is an acronym for the SAP Business Suite 4 the HANA Database. We
call it the "next generation" of SAP business suite software because it replaces the
previous version of SAP's business suite, SAP ECC (SAP Enterprise Central
Component), the same way a new Android or Apple mobile device replaces the
previous device versions.

SAP S/4HANA is the digital core of an organization, meaning it is the financial

system of record with the universal journal being the single source of truth. The
software is inherently designed with analytics, including predictive and forecasting
capabilities, always in-mind. Data is collected from transactions and fed into
analytical applications that provide information to help customers make the right
decisions across all lines of business.

SAP S/4HANA can be easily integrated with other SAP and third-party
applications through the SAP Business Technology Platform. It also has
an extensibility framework where non-developers can easily make customizations
and enhancements through apps that guide you through the process of building
extensions that will be stable through future release upgrades.

The SAP Business Suite software is built on the SAP HANA database, and the user
experience is enhanced with the SAP Fiori user interface to provide a consistent and
intuitive user experience, both in desktop and mobile apps. Core Data Services is an
analytical layer that sits on top of the SAP HANA database to facilitate the retrieval
and modelling of data in the analytical SAP Fiori apps.

The SAP Fiori Launchpad is the central entry point to SAP S/4HANA for all users on
mobile and desktop devices. The launchpad is an employee's personal home page
where they can see and launch the applications permissioned for their assigned
role(s). SAP Fiori is the design language that creates a consistent look and feel
across all apps, regardless of whether the app lives within SAP S/4HANA (for
example, the Manage My Timesheet app), or opens a new browser tab to launch an
integrated SAP or third-party solution (for example, the Concur Travel Expense app).
Hundreds of SAP Fiori apps are available across different lines of business and
industries, covering a wide range of transactional and analytical tasks. In the SAP
Fiori Launchpad, users can access embedded support, including guided simulations
that align with business processes, video tutorials, and help information that's in-
context of the app you are currently working in. Users can also make
personalization’s to make their view of the launchpad fit their needs best.

Core Data Services (CDS) is a common set of domain-specific languages and

services for defining and consuming semantically rich data models. In other words,
the CDS layer provides a universal language to read and process data across
different applications. You can create CDS views to model data from the database for
analytical purposes, or to generate application programming interfaces (APIs) to
allow other applications to consume the data. In general, CDS views are intended to
be consumed by a user interface (UI), analytical applications, or other solutions.

The SAP HANA database is an in-memory, column-oriented database designed to

store, receive, and query data. The in-memory computing engine enables SAP
HANA to process data stored in RAM (Random-access memory; also called "main
memory") as opposed to reading it from a physical disk drive. Think of RAM storage
as your own short-term memory and disk storage as your long-term memory. If you
are asked to recall something you just learned 10 seconds ago, the information is still
in your short-term memory and is easily accessible. If you are asked to recall
something you learned 10 years ago, it is going to take much longer to sift through all
that data and identify the correct information. For databases, storing data in main
memory instead of disk provides faster data access and, by extension, faster
querying, and processing.

The structure of the SAP HANA database tables is column-oriented, meaning all data
for a single column is stored in the same location. This is opposed to row-oriented
databases that store all data for a single row in the same location. Think of a
spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel with user data - the columns are headers that define
a certain type of data to be stored in each column (first name, last name, phone
number, address), where each row is an entire user record with details about one
individual person. When running a query, a row-oriented database selects each
record (row) of information that has something relevant to the query, then discards
the data that is not relevant. A column-oriented database applies a filter to the
column(s) relevant for the query and selects only the necessary data that is
requested. Because column-oriented databases only search for the data in a query,
instead of casting a wide net and discarding information they do not need, they are
much faster and more precise. In-memory, column-oriented databases are designed
to handle large volumes of data, which is necessary to feed analytical applications
that generate predictive analyses and to train AI chatbots or other types
of technology that learn through exposure to data (for example, Machine Learning).