SAP HANA Cloud: Instances, Data Lake and the Multi-Model Engines (Relational, Graph, Vector, Spatial)
As of 2026-10-30
SAP HANA Cloud is the database service of SAP BTP behind CAP applications, Datasphere and agent memory. This module teaches how to size and provision an instance, when to attach a data lake, and how to use the vector, spatial, graph, JSON and knowledge graph engines from plain SQL. You run a six-row lab on the free tier: a REAL_VECTOR similarity query and an ST_Distance query with reproducible rankings. You also learn which engines the free tier cannot run and which TechEd 2026 items are generally available or only planned.
What you will learn
- Provision a SAP HANA database instance in SAP HANA Cloud Central and list the wizard settings that cannot be changed later.
- Create a table with a REAL_VECTOR column and rank rows with COSINE_SIMILARITY and L2DISTANCE.
- Create an ST_GEOMETRY column in SRID 32630 and compute distances with ST_Distance.
- Select engine and tier (free tier, production, NSE, data lake) for a described workload.
- Distinguish generally available from planned HANA Cloud announcements of TechEd 2026.
Concept overview: SAP HANA Cloud in 2026
SAP HANA Cloud is the managed database service of SAP BTP. One service gives you an in-memory column store for SQL, plus engines for spatial, graph, JSON documents, vectors and RDF knowledge graphs, and an optional disk-based data lake. Since SAP Sapphire in May 2026, SAP positions the technical layer inside the SAP Business AI Platform, which unifies SAP BTP, SAP Business Data Cloud and SAP Business AI. In this module we keep saying "SAP BTP" for accounts, subaccounts and service instances, because that is still the vocabulary of the help pages and of the cockpit.
The practical consequence: SAP describes SAP HANA Cloud as "now a core component of SAP Business Data Cloud" and as the AI database behind it. The database you size for a CAP application, for Datasphere space storage or for an agent memory is the same product, run with different workloads. Learn its three layers once: the SAP HANA database instance (memory, compute, storage), the optional data lake attached to it, and the multi-model engines you switch on per instance.
Prerequisites
- A productive SAP BTP account with SAP HANA Cloud entitlements, or an SAP BTP trial account.
- Working SQL knowledge (SELECT, INSERT, schemas).
- Basic familiarity with the SAP BTP cockpit.
Outcomes
- Reproduce the cosine ranking 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 6 on the lab table.
- Reproduce the distances 20, 10, 5, 12, 13, 17 metres for IDs 1 to 6.
- State three free tier limits that block JSON, triple store and data lake Files tests.
- Write an embedding design using VECTOR_EMBEDDING with the right type argument.
- Justify NSE exclusion for tables with REAL_VECTOR columns.
Full module with the Consultant plan — €19.90/month. The full module adds: the decision framework · the end-to-end scenario walkthrough · the KPI scorecard · the anti-patterns · the code blocks · the knowledge check · the diagrams.