SAP HANA refers to the most recent database from SAP HANA = High Performance Analytical Appliance. HANA is an in-memory database (which means data resides in server memory relative to server hard drives). It enables real-time processing of large amounts of data in a short period of time.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSAP S/4HANA, meanwhile, refers to the latest SAP version of its ERP system and # 40; Enterprise Resource Planning and # 41; The S / 4 system only works on the HANA database, unlike the previous ones. versions of SAP that also worked on different databases (such as Oracle, IBM, or Microsoft databases).