Top 15 SAP HANA Interview Questions and Answers

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Interviews are the most important and complicated part for job seekers. Interviews are mainly conducted by the authority to check the candidate’s potential, personality traits, and ability to perform. Many will get frightened by this but with the proper guidance and enthusiasm, anyone can clear this interview session. 

SAP HANA courses are revolutionary courses in the field of business. This SAP HANA course helps to provide new paths or opportunities for the upcoming generation. SAP HANA helps to deliver immediate growth to the company’s organizations. For clearing the SAP HANA interview the aspirants should have the depth knowledge of SAP HANA and the updated information on SAP HANA.

SAP HANA is a unique in-memory database, which works with a real-time computing engine. SAP HANA is interlinked with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software which includes several modules like Products Planning (PP), Materials Management (MM), and Finance Accounting and Controlling, etc.

Are you finding the best sources for your SAP HANA interview preparation? Well, you are at the right place. Here listing down some of the most commonly asked SAP HANA interview-related questions and answers that will help you to clear the interview. These SAP HANA interview-related questions and answers are suitable for both aspirants: beginners and premature.

1: Why do we use SAP HANA?

The interviewer asked this question to check your knowledge and understanding of the SAP HANA. So, candidates should have to answer this question wisely by explaining the numerous benefits of SAP HANA and its application.

SAP HANA delivers capabilities for machine learning, spatial processing, graph, streaming analytics, time series, text analytics/search, and cognitive services all within the same platform. Applications on SAP HANA can provide real-time actionable insights from a wide variety of data types.

2: Tell us about your experience on SAP HANA?

By asking this type of question the interviewer wants to acknowledge the candidate’s personal experience on SAP HANA and its purposes on companies.

SAP HANA nurtures businesses in executing plans and managing sales promotions strategically. Moreover, it helps you automate the marketing process, thereby opening up the opportunity to develop multi-channel offers. It also helps to pinpoint potential customers on the list.

3: Describe the uniqueness of SAP HANA?

The interviewer wants to identify your in-depth understanding of SAP HANA. The candidate should answer this question by explaining the unique reasons for SAP HANA’s uses.

SAP HANA proves to be a unique tool for users in many ways and the reasons for being unique are as follows:

• SAP HANA is the first-ever database technology to be used for OLTP and OLAP application processing.
• SAP HANA deliberately provides a query processing environment for the structured as well as unstructured data, that is for both relational databases (tables) and less structured (text, graph) respectively.
• SAP HANA’s multi-core processing engine system processes the data parallelly. This parallel processing is done within different columns of the same database. By using a columnar database, the system optimizes data structure and eases sorting large data by comprising. 

4: Which platforms are supported by SAP HANA?

The best way to answer this question is by pointing out the platforms that are supported by the SAP HANA. The interviewer wants to identify candidates’ understanding regarding SAP HANA works.

Various platforms are supported by SAP HANA and they are as follows:

• Microsoft Windows Vista, 7,8 server 2008 (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows 7,8,10 server 2008/R2 (64-bit)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 (64-bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 (64-bit)
• Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9)

5: What is sizing in SAP HANA?

By asking this type of question the interviewer wants to acknowledge the interpretation of SAP HANA sizing. The best way to answer this question is to explain the SAP HANA sizing with relevant points.

SAP HANA sizing refers to determining the hardware requirements for specific SAP HANA installation requirements. Hardware components are important for sizing the point of view which are CPU, Memory, and Harddisk. The most crucial task in sizing is to estimate the size of the server best suited for the business users’ requirements. In SAP HANA, we can operate sizing in these three ways:

• By using the quick sizer tool
• By using DB script
• By using ABAP report

6: What are the different types of deployment models in SAP HANA?

The interviewer asked this type of question to identify your knowledge and information about SAP HANA. While answering this question make sure that you are sufficiently aware of the deployment models in SAP HANA.

SAP HANA suggests three types of deployment options and these are as follows:

• On-premise solution: in this model, the customer purchases software and hardware; the operations are managed by the customer itself.
• Cloud solution: in this model, the hardware and software are provided by the cloud solution provider and it is rented to the customer.
• Hybrid solution: in this model, some part of the software is run by the client on-premise server owned by the client, and the additional solution is rendered by the client provider.

7: What are the compelling SAP HANA use cases?

The best way to answer this question is to point out the use cases which are produced by SAP HANA.

Real-time analytics as supported by SAP HANA and has numerous potential use cases including:

• Profitability reporting and forecasting
• Retail merchandising and supply chain optimization
• Security and fraud detection
• Energy use monitoring and optimization and,
• Telecommunications network monitoring and optimization.

8: What is a persistence layer?

The interviewer asks these kinds of questions to check your overall knowledge of SAP HANA. The best way to answer this question is to highlight the main use of the persistence layer.

The persistence layer is mainly responsible for processing data backups periodically and sorting them permanently. This is known as ‘savepoints’ and by default, the savepoints frequency is every five minutes. The data stores as a log volume and data volumes.

9: What are the different perspectives in SAP HANA studio?

The interviewer wants to understand your knowledge and skills of SAP HANA. The best way to answer this question is to point out the perspective of SAP HANA studio.

The SAP HANA studio contains different perspectives which we can choose to work on. Some commonly used perspectives are:

• SAP HANA Administration Console
• SAP HANA Modeler
• Application Development
• Lifecycle Management
• SAP HANA Development
• ABAP
• BW Modeling

10: What are the packages in SAP HANA?

The best way to answer this question is to highlight the main points that have to be shown in the SAP HANA interview. First of all, describe the package and its purpose of use. The interviewer wants to understand how you can explain SAP HANA’s packages.

Packages are folders that contain all the modeling-related data objects. We call it a package because it can also contain all the information modeling data in a complete package and we can use it for transferring purposes.

The design-time object such as information views, sub-packages, procedures, analytic privilege resides in the package. There are two types of packages:

• Structural
• Non-structural

11: What are the analytical privileges in SAP HANA?

By asking this question the interviewer wants to know about your work experience on SAP HANA because it is a real-time analytical technology database. The best way to answer this question is to explain the analytical privileges and give a point answer.

In SAP HANA, the analytical privileges are data access restrictions that define and assign to selected users of SAP HANA. 

They work as data security tools for SAP HANA users and clients. Analytical privileges are provided row-level data security to SAP HANA users contrary to object-level security which the object privileges assign. This restricts users to see only a selected section of data from the entire data set. 

12: What are the ways to create a table in SAP HANA?

The interviewer wants to know about your knowledge and skill of table creation in SAP HANA. The best way to answer this question is by highlighting the ways of creating a table in SAP HANA and briefly explain the points.

There are two ways to create tables in SAP HANA. One method is a command-line method, where we can use the SQL console to write a SQL script and create a table. The second method is a GUI-based method where we can use a graphical interface to create a table.

13: Describe the informational views in SAP HANA?

The interviewer or examiner wants to understand your knowledge and working experience on SAP HANA. The best way to answer this question is to highlight the major points and reasonably explain the points.

There are three types of information views in SAP HANA and they are as follows:

• Attribute view: This informational view uses attributes, or the non-measurable, non-quantifiable data to design views and models according to the business logic. However, the data used in attribute view is referred to as ‘Master data’ as it is used as reference information in other views (analytic and calculation). The tables in the attribute view do not contain any facts or measures.

• Analytic view: In this informational view, we can create star schemas, having a central transaction or fact table and multiple dimensional tables linked to it via primary keys. The measurements are contained only in the central transaction table which can be grouped or joined with multiple dimensional tables.

• Calculation view: This informational view is a progressive model which uses both the elements of attribute and analytic views to make a complex data model that follows complex business logic.

Moreover, this information view gives us the freedom to combine and create from a range of options like tables, column views, analytic views, attribute views. It enables us to perform multidimensional reporting by using measures and dimensions from different sources.

14: Can you explain the difference between SAP HANA and SAP S/4 HANA?

The interviewer wants to know about your proficiency in SAP HANA. The suitable way to answer this question is to give the reasonable difference between the SAP HANA and SAP S/4 HANA.

SAP HANA is a next-generation in-memory database while the SAP S/4 HANA is an application that is designed for SAP HANA to run the in-memory databases. It is a revolutionary platform based on the company’s new in-memory database.

15: Describe the two relational data stores in SAP HANA?

SAP HANA supports both tables of row-based and column-based approaches to data storage. The two types of relational data stored in SAP HANA includes:

• Row-based table: It is the traditional relational database approach to SAP HANA. It stores a table in a sequence of rows. 

• Column-based table: SAP HANA is particularly optimized for column order storage. It stores a table in a sequence of columns i.e. the entries of a column are stored in a contiguous memory location.

More commonly asked questions in the interviews:

• Tell me about yourself?
• Why should we hire you?
• What are your goals for the future?
• What is your greatest strength?
• What is your greatest weakness?
• What are your salary expectations?
• How do you handle your stress or pressure?
• Describe your most challenging project?
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• How did you learn about the opening?
• Why do you want this job?
• What kind of work environment do you like best?
• Describe your leadership style?
• Why do you want this job?
• Do you have any questions for us?
• Tell us about a time when you showed your leadership quality?
• When were you most satisfied with your job?
• Tell us about your unique quality?
• What can you do better for us than the other applicants?
• Describe a difficult work situation or project and how do you handle it?

Conclusion:

This article is all about the interview-related questions and answers you have. The SAP HANA interviews are mostly conducted to identify the course-based proficiency and experience of the candidate rather than personal characterization. This SAP HANA interview is to check the ability and updated skills of the candidate.

In this article, I have tried to cover almost all the frequently and commonly asked SAP HANA interview questions and common interview questions. I hope you all found it useful to crack your SAP HANA interview.

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