Importing and Exporting Database Content

The SAP HANA Database Explorer supports you in importing and exporting catalog objects, including schemas, into your database. The source files must be compressed in .tar.gz format.

To import database objects from one SAP HANA tenant database to another tenant database, the following prerequisites must be fulfilled:

• Database objects being imported must have been previously exported by using the export feature of the database explorer.

• In the destination database you must have the INSERT/UPDATE, DROP, or CREATE object privileges for the destination catalog objects.

• You must have the IMPORT system privilege.

• Importing binary files must have been generated on an SAP HANA system with the same endianness as the destination system.

Hint

Import database objects larger than 1 GB from the SAP HANA host to avoid sending large amounts of data across the network.

The above figure shows how to perform the import feature of the SAP HANA Database Explorer. It is possible to rename the schema during the import operation. Use the pencil icon to enter a new schema name.

Note

Importing data creates the tables in the same schema as in the source system. If the table already exists, select the checkbox so that it can be overwritten. Otherwise, the import aborts with an error message.

Increasing the number of parallel threads can speed up the import and affect database performance. For a complete schema, consider using more than 10 threads, up to the number of CPU cores in the system.

For SAP BW or SAP ERP systems with tens of thousands of tables, using many threads is reasonable (up to 256).

You can easily export tables from the SAP HANA database. As shown in the figure below, you can export them as catalog objects using SAP HANA cockpit.

Column-store tables, procedures, and sequences can be exported in either binary or CSV format.

Row-store tables can be exported only in CSV format. The size of a CSV format file can be large compared to the binary file size. By default, the exported data is stored on your local PC. However, you can also export the data to the SAP HANA server.