Concept card

SAP Lakehouse — the open lakehouse foundation of SAP Business Data Cloud (announced October 2026)

As of 2026-11-04

Edited by Cédric Mary, publication director — 27 years in the SAP ecosystem. How these pages are produced, and where automation is used.

What is SAP Lakehouse?

SAP Lakehouse is the open lakehouse foundation SAP described for SAP Business Data Cloud at SAP TechEd 2026: Apache Iceberg tables, a universal catalog on Apache Polaris, a Dremio SQL engine that federates lakehouses and relational databases without moving data, Reflections for automatic acceleration, and zero-copy sharing through BDC Connect. SAP's 29 Oct 2026 feature says BDC now supports Iceberg and Polaris; for the Dremio-based lakehouse, the 27 Oct Innovation News Guide gives: GA planned for Q1 2027. A project should cite both, each with its date.

What SAP Lakehouse is

SAP Lakehouse is the name SAP gave, at SAP TechEd 2026 in Berlin, to the open lakehouse foundation of SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC). It is not a new database and not a replacement for SAP Datasphere: it is the layer that lets users, Joule and agents discover, query and share data that sits in lakehouses and relational databases, without first copying it into SAP. The announcement material (SAP News, 29 Oct 2026) describes four ingredients: native Apache Iceberg tables, a universal catalog powered by Apache Polaris, a federated SQL engine from Dremio, and zero-copy sharing through SAP BDC Connect. SAP completed the Dremio acquisition on 6 Jul 2026 (SAP News), and the lakehouse is where that purchase becomes a product.

What SAP said on 27 and 29 October 2026

The SAP TechEd press release (SAP News, 27 Oct 2026) says SAP is expanding its lakehouse capabilities with Dremio: native support for Apache Iceberg and Apache Polaris plus a high-performance federated query engine for unified data access without moving or copying data. It also announces an expanded Databricks partnership that brings Lakeflow, Agent Bricks, Unity Gateway and Lakebase into SAP Databricks, a new SAP Application Data Foundation and an integration between Joule and Genie.

Why it matters

Agents and Joule can only reason over data they can reach: an open catalog and federated SQL decide whether that data must first be copied into SAP.
SAP's own sources differ on timing (now supports on 29 Oct 2026, planned 2027-Q1 on 27 Oct 2026), so a consultant who dates each claim avoids over-promising to a client.
It changes the sharing conversation with Databricks, Snowflake and the hyperscalers from copies and pipelines to open tables and zero-copy access.

Key points

SAP Lakehouse is the open lakehouse foundation of SAP Business Data Cloud, described by SAP at SAP TechEd 2026 (SAP News, 27 and 29 Oct 2026).
Four building blocks: native Apache Iceberg, a universal catalog powered by Apache Polaris, Dremio's federated SQL engine and BDC Connect zero-copy sharing.
The SQL engine federates lakehouses and relational databases (SQL Server, MongoDB, Oracle, Postgres named) without moving the data.
Reflections precompute and optimise results from observed usage, replacing hand-built summary tables and BI extracts; SAP's sub-second claim is unbenchmarked in the sources.
Joule Work lets business users ask in natural language and get answers grounded in SAP and custom data products.
SAP completed the Dremio acquisition on 6 Jul 2026 (SAP News).
Status is mixed: 'now supports' (SAP News, 29 Oct 2026) against planned, availability 2027-Q1 (Innovation News Guide, 27 Oct 2026).
The SAP Databricks expansion (Lakeflow, Agent Bricks, Unity Gateway, Lakebase) is announced without a date; SAP Application Data Foundation feeds it with SAP application data.

Terms used on this page

SAP Lakehouse: The open lakehouse foundation of SAP Business Data Cloud as SAP describes it (SAP News, 29 Oct 2026).
Apache Iceberg: Open table format that lets several engines read and write the same tables in object storage.
Apache Polaris: Open catalog for Iceberg tables; SAP says the universal catalog in BDC is powered by it.
Dremio: Lakehouse and SQL query-engine vendor that SAP acquired; deal completed 6 Jul 2026.
Federated query: One SQL statement that reads several systems in place, without copying the data first.
Reflection: Dremio feature that precomputes and optimises results from observed query patterns.
Zero-copy sharing: Giving another platform governed access to data without creating a physical copy.
SAP Application Data Foundation: Announced SAP service that makes SAP application data available to the BDC engine of your choice, including SAP Databricks.

Sources

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