How to use Django with HANA, express edition

• configure Django settings for HANA, express edition
• run the Django Project tutorial using HANA, express edition as the database.

Note: The PyHDB connector is an open source pure Python client for HANA. PyHDB does not support the full Python DBAPI Specification v2.0, nor does it support the full SAP HANA SQL Command Network Protocol.

The available HANA, express edition versions (1.0 SP12 and 2.0 SP00) have different default instance numbers. The published Tutorials and How-Tos refer to the default HANA 2.0 SP00 instance numbers. When using the SP12 version please use the old default instance number and port (3<instance number>15):

Installing Django and Django HANA Modules

1. Install Django by following the Django installation instructions. Verify the installation by running django-admin --version in a shell. The command should return a version string such as 1.10.5

2. The Django HANA implementation relies on the pyhdb driver, a pure python HANA database driver. Run the pip installer to install pyhdb: pip install pyhdb. If successful, this pip install command should indicate a successful installation and the version number (e.g. Successfully installed pyhdb-0.3.3).

3. Verify that you can connect to the HXE database by creating a small test script.

   a. Create a file called test_hxe_conn.py and add the following python code to it. Modify the value based on your needs, using the hints in the comments. At a minimum, you will need to change the host ip address and the password.

   import pyhdb
   
   # Define the connection to the HXE database
   connection = pyhdb.connect(
       # replace with the ip address of your HXE Host (This may be a virtual machine)
       host="10.172.91.122",
       # 39013 is the systemDB port for HXE on the default instance of 90.
       # Replace 90 with your instance number as needed (e.g. 30013 for instance 00)
       port=39013,
       #Replace user and password with your user and password.
       user="system",
       password="mypassword"
       )
   
   #Connect to the database and issue a dummy query to verify connectivity
   cursor = connection.cursor()
   cursor.execute("SELECT 'Hello Django HANA World' FROM DUMMY")
   #This should return "Hello Django HANA World"
   myString = cursor.fetchone()[0]
   print myString
   #Close the cursor
   connection.close()
   

   b. Run your test script in the python shell: python test_hxe_conn.py. If you are able to connect, the following string should be returned: Hello Django HANA World. If you are unable to connect, make sure that the connectivity setting–host, user, port and password–are correct for your database.

   c. At this point, you have verified that you can use the pyhdb database driver to connect to HANA, express edition. Now you need to verify that Django can communicate with the pyhdb driver. To do this, you need to download the django_hana module from https://github.com/mathebox/django_hana_pyhdb.

   • Navigate to https://github.com/mathebox/django_hana_pyhdb in a browser.
   • Select Clone or download.
   • Select Download ZIP and download the zip to a downloads or temporary directory of your choice. This will create the file django_hana_pyhdb-master.zip.
   • Unzip the contents of django_hana_pyhdb-master.zip under djhxe. This will create the folder djhxe/django_hana_pyhdb-master.
   • Navigate to djhxe/django_hana_pyhdb-master.
   • Run python setup.py install. This should write out messages to the console indicating that it is running install and should conclude with the line Installed <path>/lib/site-packages/django_hana-1.1-py2.7.egg. There should not be any errors reported by the pip installer.
   • You will also need to install the six package, a library for cross version transparency of Python code. To install six, run pip install six. There should not be any errors reported by the pip installer.

Following the Django Tutorial

Now that you have verified the installation of Django and verified connectivity from Python to HXE, you can follow the Django tutorial with the following HANA specific modifications.

1. Note: Be sure to complete this step (Step 1) at the beginning of the Database Setup section of the Django tutorial. You will need to make the following modification to djhxe/settings.py that is not included in the tutorial.

   a. Modify the database settings in djhxe/settings.py to point to your HANA, express edition database.

   DATABASES = {
       'default': {
           'ENGINE': 'django_hana',
           'NAME': 'djhxe',  # This is db schema name. It will be added if it does not exist.
           'USER': 'System',
           'PASSWORD': 'myPassword', # Replace with your password.
           'HOST': '10.172.91.122',  # Replace with your HXE server IP address
           'PORT': '39013',
       }
   }
   

   b. Because HANA does not support Timezone, you will also need to change the value of USE_TZ in djhxe/settings.py from True to False: USE_TZ=False.

   Note: As a result of this change, there will be time zone values shown in the online tutorial that do not show in your results.*

Next Steps

• View similar How-Tos or View all How-Tos
• Complete the Django tutorials