This is a perspective from me as end user of SAP ASE/RS/IQ and of late some exposure to HANA.
We all can agree on the fact that most organization that have OLTP also need fast reporting + analytics.
User expectation also grow from batch processing (some delay) to online (delays in minute(s)) to near real time (milliseconds ).
ASE (properly tuned) is very good at OLTP.
It is also good at Qurery reporting if so tuned (indexes, caches, in memory tempdbs etc).
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So SAP/Sybase seems to have following possible solutions for OLTP + DSS requirements.
1. ASE (primary for OLTP) + ASE ( 1 or more copies replicated and tuned for DSS/Reporting)
This could be WS, MSA, one way replication etc.
Both are same flavor of ASE so T-SQL code can work on either.
So at minimum needs two DB servers and a RepServer
2. ASE (primary for OLTP) + IQ for reporting (replication from ASE to IQ)
IQ has slightly different flavor of SQL so some code tweaking is needed.
At mimimum needs two flavors of DB servers and one RepServer
3. HANA (where OLTP + DSS/ANALYTICS/REPORTING) are merged in one server
with many more features and excellent performance for both OLTP and Reporting
Needs one (expensive ? ) database server + different flavor of SQL
So some changes needed to port existing logic. New development is not an issue.
With the above in mind, to me, it seems to be a writing on the wall that HANA will prevail, especially as h/w prices fall and after SAP recovers substantial part of their initial development cost.
Companies ( for short term valid business reasons ) may decide to stick to what is working and choose not to upgrade/change. Long term they will have to make choices
BTW : ASE is used for bespoke custom applications too. So this discussion of ASE's future is of interest from that angle too.
Avinash
