SAP HANA

Installation

TypeORM relies on @sap/hana-client for establishing the database connection:

npm install @sap/hana-client

If you are using TypeORM 0.3.25 or earlier, hdb-pool is also required for managing the pool.

Data Source Options

See Data Source Options for the common data source options.

• host - The hostname of the SAP HANA server. For example, "localhost".

• port - The port number of the SAP HANA server. For example, 30015.

• username - The username to connect to the SAP HANA server. For example, "SYSTEM".

• password - The password to connect to the SAP HANA server. For example, "password".

• database - The name of the database to connect to. For example, "HXE".

• encrypt - Whether to encrypt the connection. For example, true.

• sslValidateCertificate - Whether to validate the SSL certificate. For example, true.

• key, cert and ca - Private key, public certificate and certificate authority for the encrypted connection.

• pool — Connection pool configuration object:

  • maxConnectedOrPooled (number) — Max active or idle connections in the pool (default: 10).

  • maxPooledIdleTime (seconds) — Time before an idle connection is closed (default: 30).

  • pingCheck (boolean) — Whether to validate connections before use (default: false).

  • poolCapacity (number) — Maximum number of connections to be kept available (default: no limit).

See the official documentation of SAP HANA Client for more details as well as the extra properties: Node.js Connection Properties.

Column Types

SAP HANA 2.0 and SAP HANA Cloud support slightly different data types. Check the SAP Help pages for more information:

• SAP HANA 2.0 Data Types

• SAP HANA Cloud Data Types

TypeORM's SapDriver supports tinyint, smallint, integer, bigint, smalldecimal, decimal, real, double, date, time, seconddate, timestamp, boolean, char, nchar, varchar, nvarchar, text, alphanum, shorttext, array, varbinary, blob, clob, nclob, st_geometry, st_point, real_vector and half_vector. Some of these data types have been deprecated or removed in SAP HANA Cloud, and will be converted to the closest available alternative when connected to a Cloud database.

Vector Types

The real_vector and half_vector data types were introduced in SAP HANA Cloud (2024Q1 and 2025Q2 respectively), and require a supported version of @sap/hana-client as well.

For consistency with PostgreSQL's vector support, TypeORM also provides aliases:

• vector (alias for real_vector) - stores vectors as 4-byte floats

• halfvec (alias for half_vector) - stores vectors as 2-byte floats for memory efficiency

@Entity()
export class Document {
    @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
    id: number

    // Using SAP HANA native type names
    @Column("real_vector", { length: 1536 })
    embedding: Buffer | number[]

    @Column("half_vector", { length: 768 })
    reduced_embedding: Buffer | number[]

    // Using cross-database aliases (recommended)
    @Column("vector", { length: 1536 })
    universal_embedding: Buffer | number[]

    @Column("halfvec", { length: 768 })
    universal_reduced_embedding: Buffer | number[]
}

By default, the client will return a Buffer in the fvecs/hvecs format, which is more efficient. It is possible to let the driver convert the values to a number[] by adding { extra: { vectorOutputType: "Array" } } to the connection options. Check the SAP HANA Client documentation for more information about REAL_VECTOR or HALF_VECTOR.

Use the appropriate vector functions for similarity searches.