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PhilipMugglestone
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
3,979
You might have already seen my earlier blog introducing SAP HANA External Machine Learning library which discusses how you can access TensorFlow models from HANA?

Well in the rush to produce hands-on video tutorials in time for RTC (release to customer) perhaps the content wasn't as elegant as it could be.

The scenario involved tweaking of the standard TensorFlow MNIST model to change the default signature and a HANA table with 784 columns - Ouch!

Partly this was due to me using an internal pre-release - some things changed between that and RTC - but also very much due to my lack of knowledge. Interesting your feedback also made it clear that not everyone has a TensorFlow Serving environment up and running - so perhaps we could provide some pointers in that area too?

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and having had time for additional research we've been able to significantly revise the content. Yesterday we published 6 all-new video tutorials that show how to get going with the EML and TensorFlow and all in the context of SAP HANA, express edition.

The scenario now uses the standard MNIST model without modification, has a single BLOB column in HANA to store the image of a handwritten digit, and uses Database Explorer (via Web IDE for SAP HANA) rather than Eclipse as the development environment (though you could still use Eclipse if you prefer).

There's a video showing how to install and configure TensorFlow with Tensorflow Serving from scratch in Google Cloud Platform - and given that SAP HANA, Express Edition is also available there you can take full advantage of the free trial!

Very much inspired by frank.gottfried's excellent blog here. there's also a video showing how to get started with the now fully supported Python driver delivered with SAP HANA Client Tools in SPS 02. This enables you to load test data directly into HANA using a Python script. You don't need to do this to follow along with the tutorials however as a few rows of MNIST test data have also been published to our GitHub repository which can easily be imported via Database Explorer.

It's the same playlist as before: SAP HANA Academy – EML Playlist

There are now 7 main videos covering the following topics:

UPDATE: 11Oct17 - HANA 2.0 SPS02 revision 21 introduces significant changes to the way output tensors are handled. If you're using revision 21 please refer to the following tutorial for updates to the real-time scoring example with MNIST:

The previous videos are still there at the foot of the playlist - just in case you're addicted to Eclipse:

You’ll also find above tutorials posted to the What’s New for Predictive HANA 2.0 SPS 02 playlist where you can also get the low down on enhancements to the Predictive Analysis Library (PAL) featuring the all-new web-based Application Function Modeler, as well improvements to R Integration.

If you’re interested to learn about what’s new with HANA 2.0 SPS 02 in general check out the following blog.

Should you be attending SAP TechEd please drop by our SAP HANA Academy event on the Monday. A full day of lecture/demo and hands-on sessions where we’ll be covering the EML / TensorFlow as well as other hot HANA topics – and unlike YouTube you can interrupt us to ask questions! Attendance is free and we’ll help you get started with SAP HANA, express edition on the Google Cloud Platform using the free trial – so you can keep your work afterwards.

May your tensors flow with HANA!



The SAP HANA Academy provides free online video tutorials for the developers, consultants, partners and customers of SAP HANA.

Topics range from practical how-to instructions on administration, data loading and modeling, and integration with other SAP solutions, to more conceptual projects to help build out new solutions using mobile applications or predictive analysis.

For the full library, see SAP HANA Academy Library – by the SAP HANA Academy

For the full list of blogs, see Blog Posts – by the SAP HANA Academy
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