Lexicon-Based Sentiment Analysis Using SAP HANA

Sentiment analysis (SA) is one of the fields in which "big data" need to be processed. The term "sentiment" refers to the feelings, beliefs, emotions, and opinions that people express on certain matters in written form, usually in online media such as social networks. Sentiment analysis can provide enterprises with valuable insights into, for example, what customers think about their products. When sentiments are collected from social networks over some period of time, the amount of data can indeed be "big". This paper describes and evaluates a lexicon-based SA solution, implemented as a prototype using SAP HANA. Sentiments are collected from Facebook and Google+, using a combination of tools including Microsoft Excel and the Power Query add-on to Excel. Since HANA employs in-memory database technology, the calculation of sentiment values is very fast. As a result of the sentiment analysis, five categories (from strong negative to strong positive), plus a category "sentiment not found", are filled with individual sentiments and evaluated with the help of business intelligence tools. SA results are made available on a user interface created with SAP's current interface technology, SAPUI5.