Hi everyone, in this post I'll share with you how to customize your SAP HANA login screen background image in just 3 steps. I got to know this new feature from SAP HANA SPS 09: New Developer Features; XS Admin Tools, but have never tried it before. Recently I've supported a SAP HANA PoC. Since the customer wanted to customize the login screen background image, I had the chance to use this new cool feature in SAP HANA SPS09.

As you know, in SAP HANA SPS08, we're not able to change the background image of form login screen. So, the following background image always appear when you use form login authentication.

As of SAP HANA SPS09, the login screen has been changed to the following simple blue style. As you can see, the background is nothing more than light blue, but don't worry, it's now possible to customize your own login screen background image. You can use whatever image you like.

You can find the information about this topic from SAP HANA XS Configuration Parameters - SAP HANA Administration Guide - SAP Library which is documented very clearly. Now let's DIY our own background image.

Step 1: Upload your image and make it public

First of all you need to know one thing, the form-based login screen is identical for all SAP HANA native applications which means the background image has no relationship with your XS projects and should be placed in a "global" place. As you can see in the above example, "/sap/hana/xs/ui/Image.jpg" is a good choice. For simplicity, I just uploaded the background image to my XS project, since it's my own SAP HANA system and I'm the only user.

You may notice there's a prerequisite, "No requirement for authentication and authorization". So, we need to make the background image available to everyone. We can achieve this with the following .xsaccess file, just set null to authentication.

.xsaccess

Step 2: Configure xsengine.ini -> httpserver -> login_screen_background_image

Just input the path of our background image.

Step 3: Set the technical user

Create a technical user, e.g., "_USS" and grant the role "sap.hana.xs.selfService.user.roles::USSExecutor"

Assign the technical user to the artifact "/sap/hana/xs/selfService/user/selfService.xssqlcc"

That's it! Visit whichever SAP HANA native applicaiton to have a test.

Hope you enjoyed reading my blog and DIY your own login screen background image successfully!