
Schrödinger's dumpster! Source:
Richard Feynman.

HANA Deployment Infrastructure | HDI
philip.mugglestone just added another video tutorial to the SAP HANA Cloud series. In this blog, you will find the video embedded with some additional information and resources.
HDI, short for HANA Deployment Infrastructure, for some is a bit like Schrödinger's cat: conceptually challenging. You may have heard it has to do with containers, but not related to the containers of MDC (multi-tenant database containers), Docker, Kubernetes, or Cloud Foundry. Something to do with runtime objects and development artifacts? A build tool?
Yet, new it is not. The technology has been with us for a while as HDI was introduced in 2015 (SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 11) together with XS Advanced (XSA), at the time the next-gen built-in application development and runtime environment for SAP HANA. Although often confused, HDI and XSA are related but do not depend upon each other. While HDI is highly relevant for application development with SAP HANA Cloud, XSA is not even included (you can use the Cloud Foundry instead).
So what exactly is HDI (again)?
Below a brief video tutorial that tells you all you need to know on the topic. You can watch it in about 17 minutes. What you learn is
- Where HDI originates and what problem it solves
- Why HDI is relevant for SAP HANA Cloud
- What design-time artifacts are in the context of HDI
- How HDI technically works
- How to address the conceptual challenges when working with HDI
- Where to find more information

Video Tutorial | HDI - Under the Hood
In this video tutorial, Philip Mugglestone goes "under the hood" of HDI to explain how HDI containers are architected and how to make best use of them. After providing context and background, Philip covers the topics of schema-less development, design-time artefacts and isolation including examining real-world examples hands-on. Key conceptual challenges are also addressed and a summary of key benefits to using HDI is provided.
https://youtu.be/UmOkjPxE6Us?list=PLkzo92owKnVzONfsNdQNmpPQvUT54UUAL
00:00 - Introduction
00:37 - Evolution of SAP HANA
03:10 - HANA Cloud
04:16 - Design-Time Artefacts
07:18 - Under the Hood
12:20 - Conceptual Challenges
15:32 - Reference Guide
16:16 - Summary and Benefits
We Want More
Documentation
HDI has its own reference guide, which explains exactly how this all works.
SAP Community Blogs
From the blogosphere, we have the original post introducing the topic and a later post explaining how we can use HDI without XSA or Cloud Foundry, both by thomas.jung.
Also of interest are these post which focus on the SQL API, developer productivity, and best practises.
NPMJS
For the actual Node.js packages, see
SAP Support
For the release notes and support information, see the SAP ONE Support Launchpad

Post Scriptum: Empty When Full
Richard Feynman was an American bongo player who won Nobel prizes as theoretical physicist.
He is dead but you can
follow Prof Feynman on Twitter. Strange, no? Like the cat.
https://youtu.be/qWabhnt91Uc
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Over the years, for the SAP HANA Academy, SAP’s Partner Innovation Lab, and à titre personnel, I have written a little over 300 posts here for the SAP Community. Some articles only reached a few readers. Others attracted quite a few more.
For your reading pleasure and convenience, here is a curated list of posts which somehow managed to pass the 10k-view mile stone and, as sign of current interest, still tickle the counters each month.
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