What's a straightforward way to replicate data from SQL Server to SAP HANA?

Question

I consult on SAP HANA (www.saphana.com), a relatively new database from SAP. A majority of my experience is in Data Modeling on HANA, and thus I've done very little in terms of setting up or administering replication or ETL processing (typically via SAP SLT or SAP BO Data Services, other products are also supported though).

I'll be starting a side project with small cloud instances of HANA, replicating data into HANA from SQL Server. The idea is replicate analytics from a transactional system into HANA for reporting purposes. No need for ETL - just simple 1:1 mapping at this point.

I haven't done much with SQL Server so I'm interested in feedback from folks with SQL Server experience about the easiest/best way to replicate data from SQL Server to a non-SQL Server DB. The goal is close to real time replication.

At this point I'm just building a prototype so I'm not too worried (yet) about performance, scalability, fail-over, etc etc. Just trying to get something off the ground.

tl;dr - I'm looking for recommendations for replication technology to replicate data from SQL Server to another database (SAP HANA) in a simple 1:1, no transformations needed. I have basically no SQL Server experience. This is for a simple prototype at this point.

Answer 1

You can also use HANA Smart Data access available with SPS7. HANA then uses ODBC to access the data of SQLServer. This is explained this tutorial video: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-4319

No additional licence required.

Answer 2

SQL Server supports heterogenous replication to non-SQL Server subscribers . In such configuration SQL Server pushes changes in near real time to an non-SQL Server subscriber. The officially supported subscribers are Oracle and DB2, but in general any subscriber that provides an appropriate OleDB driver. Your mileage may vary. I recommend reading about SQL Server replication, starting from the link provided.

Answer 3

The simplest and most efficient way is export the data from SQL server into plain file and then import it into HAHA. Bulk loading could be used to import faster.