Build Advanced Analytical Apps using SAP HANA Cloud

An SAP HANA Cloud instance can be included in a SAP BDC landscape.

SAP HANA Cloud can be provisioned as a new instance in a SAP BDC landscape. This is called a greenfield implementation. Customers who already run SAP HANA Cloud can integrate their instance in a SAP BDC landscape. This approach is called a brownfield implementation.

Before we look at a use case for including SAP HANA Cloud in a SAP BDC landscape, let's remind ourselves of the key capabilities of SAP HANA Cloud.

SAP HANA Cloud is a fully managed, cloud native, in-memory data platform that supports the development of advanced analytical applications and agentic AI. It includes pro-code / low-code / no-code tooling for application development (design time) and multiple, dedicated, in-memory analytical engines for data processing (run-time).

SAP HANA Cloud also includes an in-memory database for efficient columnar storage and fast data retrieval.

As well as a database, SAP HANA Cloud also includes a native data lake for optimized data storage at scale.

SAP HANA Cloud supports multi-model analytics. These include:

• Spatial - SAP HANA Spatial enables storage, management, and analysis of geometric data (points, lines, polygons). It allows businesses to combine spatial data with transactional data for real-time geographic analysis such as proximity calculations.
• Vector - SAP HANA Cloud vector engine stores and searches unstructured data such as text, documents and images to combine with structured data to support AI.
• JSON - SAP HANA JSON Document Store allows storing, managing, and querying semi-structured JSON data. JSON data supports deeply-nested structures such as logs and sensor data.
• Property Graph - The Property Graph engine supports algorithms such as shortest path, centrality, or clustering and is mainly used when analyzing structural relationships.
• Knowledge Graph - The SAP Knowledge Graph engine supports contextual queries that are based on meaning and not just on structure.

SAP HANA Cloud supports the development of advanced analytics. The key capabilities are:

• AutoML - SAP HANA AutoML automates the end-to-end process of building, training, and deploying machine learning (ML) models. By utilizing the Predictive Analysis Library (PAL) and Automated Predictive Library (APL), it enables users to automate data preprocessing, algorithm selection, hyperparameter tuning, and model evaluation, making it easier for both data scientists to create intelligent applications.
• Generative AI - SAP HANA Cloud provides the essential data sources to augment LLMs to achieve more accurate results from natural language queries.
• Predictive Analytics Library (PAL) - PAL is a library of built-in algorithms to support the data scientist who builds machine learning models and predictive analytics.
• Information Modeling - Develop run-time optimized dimensional and relational analytic data models using calculation views.

SAP HANA Cloud provides tools for data integration from any source.

• Delta Share - SAP BDC data products can be shared with SAP HANA Cloud to build advanced analytics. Data products can also be generated from SAP HANA Cloud-based applications to share with other applications and data platforms.
• Replication and Virtualization - SAP HANA Cloud provides tools to connect to any data source and to extract, transform and load data (ETL) or connect remotely to data sources to read from live source tables.
• Remote Data Adapters - A wide range of adapters and connectors are provided to connect to any data source on any platform.
• 3rd Party ETL - SAP HANA Cloud connects to 3rd party tools to extract, transform and load data from non-SAP sources.

SAP HANA Cloud is a powerful data platform that provides a large number of tools and services to build advanced analytical application and agentic AI. When SAP BDC was launched, customers could provision SAP Databricks and later SAP Snowflake to handle their AI workloads. Since SAP HANA Cloud can now be provisioned in SAP BDC, customers can choose to work with an SAP-native platform to support their AI development projects.

Customers have developed many SAP HANA Cloud SQL-based artifacts including calculation views, procedures, and functions that utilize the multi-model run-time engines of SAP HANA Cloud. By integrating SAP HANA Cloud in SAP BDC, customers can now generate data products from these valuable artifacts so that they can be shared with data scientists and application developers.

Customers have connected 3rd party systems to SAP HANA Cloud to provide external data. Again, these connections in SAP HANA Cloud can be leveraged by SAP BDC to bring in data that can be generated as data products.