Document Grounding
1 Overview
Description
SAP Document Grounding is a managed service offering under the Generative AI Hub on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). It is built on the principles of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) but provided as a ready-to-use capability. Instead of designing and maintaining custom data and vector pipelines, developers can directly connect enterprise document sources — such as Amazon S3, SharePoint, SAP Document Management Service (DMS), SAP Work Zone, or SFTP file servers — and use them in AI orchestration workflows with minimal setup.
Once a data source is connected through one of the managed connectors, the service automatically handles document ingestion, chunking, embedding creation, and retrieval. This approach is recommended for most enterprise scenarios, as it provides end-to-end lifecycle management, including automatic content refresh when source documents are updated.
For advanced or large-scale use cases, the Document Grounding Vector API allows developers to directly ingest pre-chunked and pre-embedded data into the service. This method provides fine-grained control over chunking logic, metadata enrichment, and batching behavior — ideal for scenarios where ingestion performance or metadata precision is critical. For example, developers can preprocess documents locally, create embeddings in batches, and push them via the Vector API to optimize throughput. More details can be found in the official documentation: Preparing Data Using Vector API.
By combining automated ingestion with flexible APIs, SAP Document Grounding provides a scalable and enterprise-grade foundation for generative AI applications grounded in trusted, company-specific knowledge.