For the most recent edition of this post (SPS 05), see
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In this blog, you will find some personal suggestions about how to get certified as SAP Certified Application Associate - SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04.
This exam is available as of December 2019.
For the blog posts about the other SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 exams, see
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Once you passed the exam, you will receive a digital badge from Acclaim
See the FAQ for more information about
SAP Global Certification Digital badges.
About the Exam
Information about the exam is published on the SAP Training website. This is also where you can book the exam (or get a certification hub subscription)
The C_ stands for associate level type exam.
Other flavors are P_ for professional and E_ for expert (associate add-on) but these are not available for SAP HANA.
There are three types of associate certifications:
- IMP = Application (implementation | modeling)
- DEV = Development (native development)
- TEC = Technology (system administration)
For each release there is an exam. Currently valid are
- 15 = SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03
- 16 = SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04
As you may have noticed, SAP Training simply continued the SPS release count from SPS 12.
Certifications expire with the maintenance support for the SAP HANA release. You can check the validity of the certification at
training.sap.com/certification/validity.
For the certification FAQs, see
Topic Areas
Information about the topic areas covered is also listed on the exam information page.
Note the small print:
SAP reserves the right to update the exam content (topics, items, weighting) at any time. So make sure to check the page before applying.
Major Topics > 12%
- Describe the Architecture and Deployment Scenarios
- Build Calculation Views
- Configure Modeling Functions
- Manage the Modeling Environment
In Between 8% - 12%
- Work with SQL and SQL Script in Models
- Optimize the Performance of Models
- Implement Text, Preditive and Hierarchy Functions
- Implement Spatial, Graph and Series Data Modeling
Minor Topics <8%
These topic areas more or less match the units and lessons from the listed SAP training courses.
Not required but recommended for those a little rusty on their SQL and SQLScript knowledge is course
For example, topic area
Build Calculation Views points to HA300 and when you download the
course manual index, you can see that this matches the lessons from unit 1 and 2.
Most of the exam material is based on course HA300. The advanced analytic topics (Text, Predictive, Hierarchy, Spatial, Graph, and Series) are covered in HA301.
What's New
Compared to the previous edition, apart from the release (SPS 03), the source material has not changed but the relative weight of the topics has:
Upgraded
- SQL and SQLScript in models
- Model management
- Architecture and deployment scenarios
Downgraded
- Text processing and predictive modeling
Dropped
- SAP supplied Virtual Data Models
For the previous exam page, see
How to Prepare
Attending the training course is not required but without the course manual it is not all that clear what material you need to study exactly.
SAP Press
There is an excellent exam guide from SAP Press for the HANAIMP exam by Rudi de Louw although the last available is for the previous edition (SPS 03)

SAP Training
If time and/or budget only allows you to attend one training, HA300 would be the best one although you would need to study the advanced analytics topics as well. Some of this is covered in openSAP courses available at no charge and in the tutorials on the SAP Development Center.
Alternatively, consider a subscription for the SAP Learning Hub and/or Certification Hub. There is a trial edition available for you to try it out. Last 14 days, so if you are a quick learner and carve out some time, you just get it done for free as well!
The learning journey shows a visualisation of the courses to take. You can logon and mark your progress.
The (free) openSAP courses about advanced analytics topics are listed under
Expand your Skills.
The tiles for each of the courses show the available formats: classroom and e-books. When subscribed to the learning hub, you also have access to an SAP HANA system for hands-on exercises (
Live Access). The assessment contains the sample questions from the course.
SAP Help Portal
There are 19 guides tagged as Development for the SAP HANA platform on the SAP Help Portal and this covers way more material than you need to know.
The
Developer Information map guides you in the right direction and the best place to start for this exam is the modeling guide.
In addition, you will also need to take a look at the guides covering advanced analytics topics like predictive, graph, and text.
As most of you will know by now, the XS "classic" environment with repository but also the SAP HANA studio were deprecated in release SPS 02 (2018) and might no longer be part of the next SAP HANA release, so it. would be very strange if there are any questions about this topic on the exam.
SAP Development Center
Of course, the tutorials from the SAP Development Center also provide a great learning opportunity. This is also the place to download the free SAP HANA, express edition or find out how you can run this in a cloud environment.
Knowledge Base
For those that have access to the SAP ONE Support Launchpad knowledge base articles (KBAs) (S- or P-user account), take note of the many excellent FAQ articles. As with the documentation guides, this will cover more material than you will need to know but it does provide an excellent resource.
This resource is more relevant for the C_HANATEC exam than for C_HANAIMP but if you want to become an SAP HANA expert, digesting an FAQ on memory management or the way caches work is time well spent.
Sample Questions
On the exam page, there is a link to a sample exam similar to the real one from

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