Classic FTW!
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook now available
I’m very happy to announce the release of the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook. The book is available right now in both eBook and paperback editions and can be ordered by most major online book vendors. It will also be available on several online book libraries.
As I blogged last month co-author David Lai and I decided to go for another run to update and improve the original SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook to make this the ultimate resource for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (Xcelsius). We worked on this second edition for the past 10 months and are very content with the final result. With about 100 recipes and over 450 pages of content (100 pages more than the first edition) this is thé ultimate and definite guide for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 developers!
In this updated version of the cookbook we broadened the scope a bit for the beginning SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards developer as well for the more experienced user. We now provide some more introduction to the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards tool itself before diving into the practical step-by-step recipes right from the start. For the more seasoned users we added chapters about dashboard performance tuning and development productivity, plus a bunch of new tips & tricks throughout the book.
The original cookbook was released almost five years ago and covered version 4.0 of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards. The second edition is updated up to the latest version of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1. Together with a team of technical reviewers, existing of some world class SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards developers, we checked the existing content from the first cookbook on its relevance, correctness and completeness. Most recipes have been updated, some a bit more than others, and we decided to keep a few of them out of the new book.
Of course we also added a lot of new recipes to feature the new 4.1 features and include more tips & tricks. We discuss all the new components, the new mobile dashboards concept and the new connectivity options, complemented with new chapters on performance tuning and development productivity. At the end of the book the other dashboarding solution by SAP (Design Studio) is introduced.
For more information on the book you can check this page on my site. You can also go to the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook page at Packt Publishing, where you can also download a sample and buy the book.
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook, by Xavier Hacking and David Lai, Packt Publishing, ISBN 9781784391959, 452 pages.
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook on Amazon.com (paperback)
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook on Amazon.com (Kindle)
De Nederlandse BI Podcast – episode 15
We recorded another edition of De Nederlandse BI Podcast tonight. This time we used Google Hangouts and it actually works very very good!
Main topics are Data Science with R and Geospatial in HANA. And as always, it is all in Dutch!
You can check the video below on Youtube, visit our website, go to iTunes or just search for the show in your favorite mobile Podcast app!
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook (2nd edition) coming this spring
We are currently in the very final stages of editing the second edition of the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook. We expect the book to be available in an eBook and paper edition in just a few weeks from now (April 2015).
For this updated version of the cookbook we broadened the scope a bit for the beginning SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards developer as well for the more experienced user. We will for example provide some more introduction to the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards tool itself before diving into the practical step-by-step recipes right from the start. For the more seasoned users we added chapters about dashboard performance tuning and development productivity, plus a bunch of new tips & tricks throughout the book.
The original cookbook was released almost five years ago and covered version 4.0 of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards. The second edition is updated up to the latest version of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1. Together with a team of technical reviewers, existing of some world class SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards developers, we checked the existing content from the first cookbook on its relevance, correctness and completeness. Most recipes have been updated, some a bit more than others, and we decided to keep a few of them out of the new book.
Of course we also added a lot of new recipes to feature the new 4.1 features and include more tips & tricks. We discuss all the new components, the new mobile dashboards concept and the new connectivity options, complemented with new chapters on performance tuning and development productivity. At the end of the book the other dashboarding solution by SAP (Design Studio) is introduced.
With 100 recipes and 470 pages of content (almost 150 pages more than the first edition) this will be thé ultimate and definite guide for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 developers!
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook, by Xavier Hacking and David Lai, Packt Publishing, ISBN 9781784391959, 472 pages.
New SAP Business Intelligence books by SAP Press
SAP Press has added a bunch of new interesting BI related books to its portfolio recently. Especially in the HANA domain a lot of new and updated content is provided for us. Here is the list with (e)books:
Making the Case for SAP HANA, by Michael Mattern and Ray Croft, ISBN 978-1-4932-1036-7, 616 pages, published 11/2014.
Implementing SAP HANA, 2nd edition, by Haun, 
Hickman, Loden, Wells, ISBN 978-1-4932-1176-0, 864 pages (!!), published 01/2014.
Getting Started with SAP HANA Cloud Platform, by James Wood, ISBN 978-1-4932-1021-3, 575 pages, expected 07/2015.
SAP BW on SAP HANA, by Merz, Hügens and Blum, ISBN 978-1-4932-1003-9, 480 pages, expected 05/2015.
SAP BW 7.4 – Practical Guide, 3rd edition, by Paler, Patel and Shiralkar, ISBN 978-1-4932-1191-3, 860 pages (!!), expected 04/2014.
SAP Data Services, by Hanck, Chen, Hanck, Hertel, 
Lissarrague and Médaille, ISBN 978-1-4932-1167-8, 625 pages, published 03/2015.
Getting Started with SAP Lumira, by Christian Ah-Soon and Peter Snowdon, ISBN 978-1-4932-1033-6, 540 pages, published 11/2014.
Make sure you use the coupon code SVYTE10 (expires April 30, 2015) to get a 10% discount.
openSAP findings
SAP offers a lot of free online courses (MOOC’s) through its openSAP platform. The cool thing is that you can work on them your own computer, wherever and whenever you want. They already have a nice range of BI related courses, about SAP HANA, BI4 and BW on HANA. More will be added in the future. All information is open and SAP even gives you access to a demo environment and tools.
I just finished the BI Clients and Applications on SAP HANA course that ran in Q4 of 2014. I really like the idea of openSAP, but there is still a lot of room for improvement:
- It’s hard to anticipate on what exact content is discussed in the videos. When I start a video I also scan through the presentation PDF to get an idea of the content and the (prerequisite) knowledge level. But, you could miss some good tips that are discussed but are not on the slides.
- There are transcripts of the spoken text, but they are not indexed or tagged.
- Basically it is a problem that the course video, slides and transcripts are now three separate files, while it would be handy if they were connected. So if I wanted to skip to a certain slide, or a part of the transcript, I would want to just click on that and the video should continue there.
- The hands-on demos are good. Most of the times I prefer the demo over the introduction slide ware. For example at the end of the course a demo of the Translation Management Tool was given, which I hadn’t used or even seen before. A few minute demo was enough to fully understand what the purpose and working of this tool was. Let me skip to this.
- Sometimes there was some very 101 level content was given (Crystal Reports is a pixel-perfect blablabla…). Let me skip this, fast.
- Some videos are around 30 minutes, which is too long. Why not split them into short 5 or 10 minute categories, for example:
- Introduction/basic features
- Advanced features
- Practical tips & tricks/best practices
- Hands-on demos
