SP06 (born the 28th of June 2013) was a rather quiet release compared to SP05 (SPS05)
Lifecycle Manager
The SAP HANA lifecycle manager includes the functions of the Software Update Manager for SAP HANA and tasks formerly performed by the on-site configuration tool.
So just a name change mostly ...
Security
The password policy and password blacklist can now be configured in the Security editor of the SAP HANA studio.
Good one, I was getting annoyed about this, development systems don't require really complex passwords.
The standard role SUPPORT has been renamed SAP_INTERNAL_HANA_SUPPORT
Good to remember, but self-explanatory
BACKUP OPERATOR is a new system privilege that allows you to implement a finer-grained separation of duties.
Required for very secure systems, where you can't give to much and to little to a Backup operator. Admins like to control what a user can or cannot do.
Administration
If you have your own SQL statements for monitoring purposes, you can now save these statements in the Administration editor for convenient repeated execution.
Good idea, I currently keep a seperate word document with all these queries.
The SAP HANA studio now provides support for system replication.
Not used so for, but I thought this was already in the product...
It is now possible to display zipped diagnosis files, that is files ending with *.gz, on the Diagnosis Files tab. The file is unzipped to a temporary file in the local SAP HANA studio workspace.
Quite useful, if you are working on Windows and the file extension is not known.
The display of crash dump files on the Diagnosis Files tab has been improved. A hyperlinked table of contents allows you to navigate the content more easily.
Definetely worth, as it is quite a feat to find how this all links together. More useful if you have the source-code, but dumps can sometimes hint to where the issue comes from and provide inputs to a workaround.
Backup
It is now possible to delete data and log backups from the backup catalog only and both from the catalog and the physical backup location.
I had some issues around this in the past, where I tried to delete backup files and then the database was looking for them. Should be a doddle now.
The secure store file system (SSFS) is now automatically included in each SAP HANA data backup and restored during recovery.
As usual there are always things missing in a backup ... lets include the .ini files optionally
SAP HANA studio option that allows you to force the system to check that all required log backups are available before the recovery starts.
Great, saves me 10 minutes waiting for progress only to find out there is a problem ...
Data Provisioning
Unified Data Provisioning: The aim is to separate the modeling of the data flows used for data provisioning from the administration of actual data provisioning, independently of the data provisioning technology used (previously only with SLT).
Makes sense, lets unify & simplify as much as we can. And it sounds like you can do more than before - worth investigating further.
Data flows can be included in delivery units and transported between systems.
Thinking ahead +1 point
SAP HANA smart data access makes it possible to connect remote data sources and to present the data contained in these data sources as if from local SAP HANA tables. This can be used, for example, in SAP Business Warehouse installations running on SAP HANA to integrate data from remote data sources.
The biggest feature in this release (imo) - performance problems on the horizon, but it was necessary, space in HANA is expensive.
Development
Core data services (CDS) is a new infrastructure for defining and consuming semantically rich data models using a a data definition language (DDL), a query language (QL), and an expression language (EL).
Maybe we can add SAP Business Objects Dataservices Workbench directly.
XSJS-based applications can now use the following new authentication methods: SAML 2.0, X.509
Good, noted.
SAP HANA Interactive Education (SHINE) , SAP HANA XS provides a set of tools that customers and partners can use for self-study and to learn how to develop.
I need this one badly to get a good start in development, the videos of the SAP HANA academy are just too basic.
Modelling:
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One editor for all the three information views - calculation view also opens in the same editor as that of the attribute view and analytic view. Also, the creation wizard for all the three view types is same.
Same again, unify and simplify, easier to find your way around.
Display Folder - for Multidimensional Reporting Clients, display folder can be defined to better structure measures.
Finally - such long lists of measures need to be more user friendly
Support to resolve missing object inconsistencies - you can now open the models in case of missing objects or element references with the error markers. These conflicts with error markers in red color can now be easily resolved.
Another great and really necessary feature, happens so many times you need to find out where the error actually comes from. Detailed error messages need to be copied into notepad and really search for the error.
The SAP HANA engine will try to determine the correct cardinality before the query is executed to select an optimized execution path.
Wise feature "detect cardinality" is something which could be resolved automatically.
Support for Eclipse Modeling Framework(EMF)-based Model 3-way merge/conflict resolution of multiple instances of the same model from the SAP HANA development perspective.
Sounds interesting, just in case you want to find out why the new model doesn't work and the old one does ... will check it out.
Enhancements made to the Variables and Input Parameters
Getting closer to Business Objects List of Values and Prompts functionality.
Predictive Analysis Library
The SAP HANA Application Function Modeler is a new graphical editor
Less scripting more wizards ...
Link Prediction: An algorithm mainly used in social network analysis.
Interesting algorithm if you are looking at analysing Social Media Data.
That's my list - which feature did you like the most?
Here the full list: http://help.sap.com/hana/Whats_New_SAP_HANA_Platform_Release_Notes_en.pdf