Connect Using the SAP HANA Node.js Interface

The first step is to check if you have Node.js installed and what version it is. Enter the following command:

node -v  

If Node.js is installed, it will return the currently installed version, such as v12.16.3.

If node is not installed, download the long-term support (LTS) version of Node.js from Node.js Download.

An install is not provided on Linux. The installation instructions can be found here.

During the installation, there is no need to check the following box as you do not need to install Chocolatey.

The SAP HANA client provides a 32-bt and a 64-bit install, as does Node.js. The Node.js driver provIded with the SAP HANA client is available for 64-bit only. For additional details see SAP note 2939501 - SAP HANA Client Supported Platforms for 2.5 and later.

Node.js packages are available using NPM, which is the standard package manager for Node.js.

1. Enter @sap/hana-client, and click Search.

   

   The page for the SAP HANA Node.js package on npm is shown below.

   

   It contains additional sample code, a weekly download counter, information about previous versions and the command to install the package using the npm command line interface (cli).

2. Create a folder named node and enter the newly created directory.

   mkdir %HOMEPATH%\HANAClientsTutorial\node
   cd %HOMEPATH%\HANAClientsTutorial\node
   

   mkdir $HOME/HANAClientsTutorial/node
   cd $HOME/HANAClientsTutorial/node
   

3. Initialize the project and install the hana-client driver from NPM.

   npm init -y
   npm install @sap/hana-client
   

   The hana-client driver is also available from the HANA client install folder. The install location was set during the install.

   npm install C:\SAP\hdbclient\node
   

   If you encounter an error about permissions, on Microsoft Windows, run or open the command prompt as an administrator, or use sudo on Linux or Mac.

The following command will list the Node.js modules that are now installed locally into the HANAClientsTutorial\node folder. Note that the extraneous message can be ignored.

npm list

Some Tips

At this point, the SAP HANA client module has been installed into the HANAClientsTutorials\node\node_modules folder and added as a dependency in the packages.json file. The following is some extra optional information on NPM.

---

Node.js modules can also be installed globally. To see the list of node modules installed globally enter the following command.

The depth parameter can be used to specify the number of levels to show when displaying module dependencies. By setting depth=x, a tree-structure is outputted that shows modules that are x levels below the top-level module.

npm list -g
npm list -g --depth=0

Command line help for NPM is available. A few examples of this are shown below.

npm help
npm help list

Additional information can be found out for a module, such as the debug module, via the info command.

npm info @sap/hana-client

The following commands can be used to view the latest available version of a package, remove a package, add a specific version of a package and then update it to the latest version.

npm view @sap/hana-client version
npm uninstall @sap/hana-client
npm install @sap/hana-client@2.4.167
npm list @sap/hana-client
npm update @sap/hana-client
npm list @sap/hana-client

SAP also maintains a NPM registry. The following steps show some commands on how to configure NPM to use the registry npm.sap.com.

npm config list
npm config set @sap:registry="https://npm.sap.com"
npm info @sap/hana-client
npm config set @sap:registry=

1. Open an editor on a file named nodeQuery.js.

   cd %HOMEPATH%\HANAClientsTutorial\node
   notepad nodeQuery.js
   

   Substitute pico below for your preferred text editor.

   cd $HOME/HANAClientsTutorial/node
   pico nodeQuery.js
   

2. Add the code below to nodeQuery.js and update the serverNode values in the connOptions to match your SAP HANA host and port.

   'use strict';
   const { PerformanceObserver, performance } = require('perf_hooks');
   var t0 = performance.now();
   var util = require('util');
   var hana = require('@sap/hana-client');
   
   var connOptions = {
       serverNode: '@User1UserKey',
       //serverNode: 'your host:your port',
       //UID: 'USER1',
       //PWD: 'Password1',
       encrypt: 'true',  //Must be set to true when connecting to SAP HANA Cloud
       sslValidateCertificate: 'false',  //Must be set to false when connecting
       //to an SAP HANA, express edition instance that uses a self signed certificate.
   
       //Below setting is used to specify where the trust store is
       //ssltruststore: '/home/dan/.ssl/trust2.pem',
   
       //Alternatively provide the contents of the certificate directly (DigiCertGlobalRootCA.pem)
       //ssltruststore: '-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----'
   };
   
   var connection = hana.createConnection();
   connection.connect(connOptions, function(err) {
       if (err) {
           return console.error(err);
       }
       var sql = 'select TITLE, FIRSTNAME, NAME from HOTEL.CUSTOMER;';
       var rows = connection.exec(sql, function(err, rows) {
           if (err) {
               return console.error(err);
           }
           console.log(util.inspect(rows, { colors: false }));
           var t1 = performance.now();
           console.log("time in ms " +  (t1 - t0));
           connection.disconnect(function(err) {
               if (err) {
                   return console.error(err);
               }   
           });
       });
   });
   

3. Run the app.

   node nodeQuery.js
   

   

Note the above app makes use of some of the SAP HANA client Node.js driver methods, such as connect, execute and disconnect.

In nodeQuery.js, the asynchronous versions of these methods are used because the optional callback function is provided. For readers that are unfamiliar with synchronous and asynchronous operations, see The Node.js Event Loop, Timers, and process.nextTick().

To enable debug logging of the SAP HANA Node.js client, enter the following command and then rerun the app.

set DEBUG=*

export DEBUG=*

The value of the environment variable DEBUG can be seen and removed with the commands below.

set DEBUG
set DEBUG=
set DEBUG

printenv | grep DEBUG
unset DEBUG
printenv | grep DEBUG