SAP HANA (high-performance analytic appliance) is an application that uses in-memory database technology that allows the processing of massive amounts of real-time data in a short time. The in-memory computing engine allows HANA to process data stored in RAM as opposed to reading it from a disk. Storing data in main memory rather than on disk provides faster data access and, by extension, faster querying and processing. Column-oriented systems store all data for a single column in the same location, rather than storing all data for a single row in the same location (row-oriented systems), and therefore is able to precisely access the data needed to answer a query, rather than scanning and discarding unwanted data in rows.
At the core, SAP HANA is a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). It combines Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) into a single in-memory database - eliminating disk bottlenecks and offering groundbreaking performance. This in-memory columnar database stores compressed data, offers parallel processing across multiprocessor cores, supports Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) commands, and is ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliant.