SAP Business AI Q1/2026: Joule for Developers and Data Experts

The portfolio is complemented by new tools for developers, enhancements in the area of document processing, and additional features within the AI Foundation.

While Joule Studio has primarily addressed low-code scenarios to date, SAP is now increasingly focusing on professional software developers and DevOps teams. New features include a Joule Studio code editor as an extension for Visual Studio Code, as well as a command-line interface (CLI).

VS Code Editor

The VS Code editor integrates Joule's AI features directly into the development environment. These include, among other things, automated project scaffolding, context-aware code generation, and intelligent recommendations during the development process. Developers do not have to leave their familiar work environment to access AI-powered features.

At the same time, the new Joule Studio CLI is specifically designed for automation and DevOps scenarios. Using the command line, users can create projects, manage configurations, perform deployments, and orchestrate CI/CD processes. With this, SAP is expanding its AI strategy beyond graphical user interfaces to include automated development and operational workflows.

Availability in SAP Datasphere

Another important new feature concerns SAP Datasphere. The AI assistant Joule is now generally available there, enabling data experts to interact with the platform using natural language.

For example, users can get explanations of functions, retrieve information about their Datasphere instance, or change system settings. In addition, Joule can perform certain actions directly without requiring users to navigate through the traditional user interface. SAP’s goal is to simplify access to complex data platforms and reduce support efforts.

Control, New Document Types

SAP is also expanding the functionality of Document AI in the area of intelligent document processing. A new feature is the ability to set custom confidence thresholds for recognized document fields. This allows companies to define more precisely which extraction results should be accepted automatically and which should be reviewed manually.

In addition, Transport Management will now support the export and import of channels and workflows, which simplifies the management of development, test, and production systems—particularly in larger SAP landscapes. The range of supported document types has also been expanded. New additions include business partner documents and delivery notes for warehouse management scenarios.

Governance and Retrieval

The Generative AI Hub of the SAP AI Foundation focuses on several enhancements designed primarily for companies with sophisticated AI applications. These include metadata management for documents, collections, and vector chunks, which are intended to enable more precise organization and filtering of knowledge repositories. Another new feature is an enhanced retrieval API.

Search results can now be aggregated from multiple data sources, evaluated, and refined. In doing so, SAP is enhancing its Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities, which are becoming increasingly important in enterprise environments.

In the area of prompt engineering, the platform now supports user-defined evaluation metrics. This allows companies to align their optimization efforts more closely with their own quality criteria. In addition, training and test datasets can be managed separately to make optimization processes more transparent. With the new Prompt Registry, SAP is also introducing features for versioning, governance, and traceability of prompts and orchestrations—an area that is becoming increasingly important as generative AI becomes more widespread in enterprises.

New Language Models

The Generative AI Hub has also been expanded to include additional language models. Newly supported models include OpenAI GPT 5.2, Gemini 3.0 Pro, Perplexity Deep Research, and Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6. With this, SAP continues to pursue an open-model approach and offers customers the ability to use different foundation models within a single platform.

ABAP AI Functions

As part of SAP Joule for Developers, SAP is expanding AI support for ABAP developers. According to the company, the new features enable developers to reduce the effort required to write ABAP and Java code by up to 20 percent.

Cost savings of up to 25 percent are cited for testing activities. Among the new features is the automatic generation of ABAP unit tests for public, protected, and private methods of global classes, as well as for public methods of local classes within global class pools.

In addition, there is a new documentation chat feature that provides direct access to content from the SAP Help Portal within the development environment. This allows developers to receive context-sensitive answers and links to relevant documentation without having to leave their current work environment.

In addition, Joule will support the analysis of ATC findings and in-house developments with AI-generated explanations. The goal is to speed up code quality assessments and migration tasks. (Source: SAP)