Problems Uninstalling Data Services

I have faced a problem recently and I wanted to share the resolution, in case you have to deal with the same topic. I was trying to upgrade a Data Services machine following SAP procedure (this is copying the configuration files uninstall and then install the new version – not very sophisticated as you can see). This wasn´t as simple as I first though.

Problem started after uninstalling the software, the new version refused to install stating that I should first uninstall the previous version. I uninstalled the software again… but Data Services is still there, so uninstalled again, but this time the process failed (makes sense as the software is already uninstalled), so I kept trying… reboot…uninstall… reboot…rename older path name… reboot…you see where this is going…

So, how did I finally solve this?

1. Start Registry Editor (type regedit in a command window or in the Execute dialog).
2. Take a backup of the current Registry content. To do this, with the top node of the registry (Computer) selected go to File -> Export and select a name for the backup file.
3. Delete the Key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIM (Suite XX.X may vary).  NOTE: You may want to write down the key KEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIMKeycode first as it contains the license code.
4. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows CurrentVersionUninstall and look for a KEY which property DisplayName is "BusinessObjects Data Services". This step is to remove the entry for the software in the Uninstall Window’s dialog.
5. Finally delete the content of the installation directory (typically: C:Program FilesBusiness ObjectsBusiness Objects Data Services)

Now you can launch the installer and this time it should work.

Hope this may help you if in case you are experiencing the same issue. Leave comments below if you have any doubts or if you would like to add anything.

Problem Uninstalling Data Services

I have faced a problem uninstalling Data Services  recently and I wanted to share the resolution, just in case you find the same problem. I was trying to upgrade a Data Services machine following SAP procedure (this is copying the configuration files uninstall and then install the new version – not very sophisticated as you can see). This was not as simple as I first thought.

Problems started after uninstalling the software, the new version refused to install stating that I should first uninstall the previous version. I uninstalled the software again… but Data Services is still there, so uninstalled again, but this time the process failed (makes sense as the software is already uninstalled), so I kept trying… reboot…uninstall… reboot…rename older path name… reboot…you see where this is going…

So, how did I finally solve this?

1. Start Registry Editor (type regedit in a command window or in the Execute dialog).
2. Take a backup of the current Registry content. To do this, with the top node of the registry (Computer) selected go to File -> Export and select a name for the backup file.
3. Delete the Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIM (Suite XX.X may vary).  NOTE: You may want to write down the key KEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIMKeycode first as it contains the license code.
4. To remove the entry for the software in the Uninstall Window’s dialog, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows CurrentVersionUninstall and look for a KEY which property DisplayName is “BusinessObjects Data Services.
5. Finally delete the content of the installation directory (typically: C:Program FilesBusiness ObjectsBusiness Objects Data Services)

Now you can launch the installer and it should work.

Hope this may help you if in case you are experiencing the same issue. If you have any doubts or if you ever faced the same issue, leave a comment below.

Make way for SAP HANA

Last month, I had the chance to attend the SAP HANA Training Bootcamp in Dubai (UAE). This was my first opportunity, after a lot of expectation and whitepapers, to put my hands on a real SAP HANA machine and the expectation were met.

Let’s start with the impressive hardware improvements that have led us to the In-memory computing revolution.

1

It’s not difficult to understand that the slower part of a database access is reading data from the disks. This problem has been addressed by the database vendors by trying to use storage optimizations, faster hardware, and other techniques but ultimately the database management system needs to read data from the disk. So here the great idea came to play… What if I can store all the data in memory?

Not so long ago, when our server processors were 32 bit, we were only able to address 4GB of memory, so that was the maximum amount of memory we cold have in our server. Nowadays with the 64 bits architectures we are able to access up to 2 TB.

In addition to the huge amount of principal memory we can have in the server, thanks to the massive parallel architectures (currently we can have up to 64 CPU Cores per server) we can apply a lot of optimizations that reduce data size and increase access performance. These are:

• Data Compression
• There is no need to use aggregate tables reducing data storage requirements.
• We can use table partitioning to increase data access speed.

All of this gives us a near to immediate query response time, even with queries involving billions on rows, and believe me, this is not just a Marketing stunt… I have seen it ;)

2

So far we have seen why it is interesting to use In-Memory computing and why do it now, but, how do we manage SAP HANA Appliance?

The core for SAP HANA Appliance administration is SAP HANA Studio. Using this tool we are able to:

• Model our information; these models are used to create multiple views of the transactional data.
• Preview data from both physical tables and the previously mentioned Information Models.
• Import and export data
• Configure data provisioning (initial table loads and replication)
• Manage the system security

I hope you have enjoyed this overview of SAP HANA appliance. Very soon I will come back with a post on SAP HANA connectivity.

If you have any questions or opinions about SAP HANA appliance, please leave a comment below.