What are the features of a parent-child hierarchy in SAP HANA?

The option highlighting the use of a single dedicated column to store the parent of each record in the table accurately reflects a key feature of parent-child hierarchies in SAP HANA. In a parent-child hierarchy, each record typically includes a reference to its parent, enabling the establishment of hierarchical relationships within the data. By utilizing a dedicated column for the parent record, the structure allows for straightforward navigation and querying of hierarchical relationships, supporting operations such as traversing the hierarchy or aggregating data at different levels.

This approach is efficient as it simplifies the representation of the hierarchy, making it easy to understand and query the relationships between records while maintaining clarity and consistency in the data structure. Therefore, this single parent reference is vital for properly implementing and utilizing parent-child hierarchies in SAP HANA.

The other options do not align with the characteristics of parent-child hierarchies in SAP HANA. For example, recursive data structures might not specifically apply in all contexts of parent-child hierarchies, as hierarchy traversal can often be managed without a recursive definition. Additionally, while parent and child fields might sometimes be of the same type, they are not necessarily defined as being different, which is not a requirement of a parent-child hierarchy. Finally, combining heterogeneous fields in