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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
A look at SAP GUI themes
Did you know you can change the way SAP GUI looks? You know, that basic SAP tool most of us use for hours each day? I really don’t like the looks of the standard theme, but you can easily change it into something else. I’m not sure if people know about this. All I see around me are those awful colors and/or 3D buttons (sometimes even with animations) like we are back in 2001 again.
In this post we will look at how to change your SAP GUI theme (which is very easy) and have a look at the different themes that are available.
To change the theme you have to go to the Options menu in SAP GUI. This is the most outer right button. You can also use the shortcut ALT+F12. Select Options here.
Here you can choose the theme from the dropdown box. You need to restart SAP GUI before the changes take effect.
Some themes, unfortunately only the older ones, have the option to use a different color set for each SAP system. This is very handy if you have to work with multiple systems at once. You can use for example a grey set for development, red for test and blue for production. Or you different colors for BW and ECC systems. All themes except for Corbu and Crystal Blue have this option.
So now let’s have a look at the various themes that are available for us with their “description”. I’ll start with the oldest theme first.
Classic: This is the well-known Windows design that was standard for Windows applications up to and including Windows 2000.
Pretty plain and basic, but ooooold.
2014: The return of the podcast
2014 must have been the year of the return of the podcast. I’m listening to way more podcasts now than a year ago, and I haven’t seen such an online buzz on podcasting for ages. Maybe it has something to do with the production quality that has risen over the years to an extremely high level. Even the most basic podcast, just a few guys talking to each other over Skype, is a good listen nowadays.
Also a number of shows have come up in the past months that demonstrate a very high production value. Not just some plain talking, but heavily mixed and edited stories to make it a perfect listen. Some of them even got wide spread attention in the MSM. Serial, StartUp, This American Life and Reply-all are examples of these.
I created a lot more time to listen to podcasts lately. While driving I rarely listen to the radio anymore and I now put on a podcast or an audiobook when running long distances, playing PS4 games (Destiny FTW!) and cooking.
So let’s have a look at my favorite podcasts of the past year, which I listen to on a very regular base (almost every show):
Appels en Peren – My favorite tech show. These guys discuss everything and nothing. Sci-fi books and movies, gadgets, Apple, Android, singularity, and so on. [Dutch]
Solomonster Sounds Off – The podcast I have been listening to during every Monday morning commute for a few years now. The Solomonster reviews the past week in pro-wrestling in this monologue podcast and previews upcoming events. I like his very consistent and logical way of making an argument combined with his historic knowledge on this great ‘sport’.
Kees de Kort BNR – Daily economics update by the most pessimistic (or realistic?) analyst of Holland. With a duration of 5 minutes this is also my shortest podcast. [Dutch]
OMT Café – Monthly or so Apple fanboy podcast by the OneMoreThing.nl guys. [Dutch]
Boars, Gore, and Swords – This is a Game of Thrones recap show, created by a group of comedians. The day after a new episode of GoT they go through it scene by scene, explain, speculate and joke. Can’t wait for the next season to start!
StartUp Podcast – Podcast about a guy who starts his own podcasting company. He shares everything. Very high production quality!
SAP BI TechEd 2014 recap video
Why waste your precious time and thousands of euros on going to the SAP TechEd event if you can get just watch a video covering all the key subjects for SAP BI?
Sven and Ronald did a quick 45 minutes SAP BI TechEd 2014 recap in Google Hangout last week. No marketing slides and no old or basic stuff we normally have to sit through each SAP presentation. Fast and very to the point. Good stuff guys!
So this is must see TV if you care about what’s happening in the the world of SAP BI and if you didn’t visit TechEd or SitNL yourself this year. Check it out in the video below or use the podcast stream for on the road listening/watching. Slides are here.
Edit: Sorry forgot to mention: The video is all Dutch… (maybe somebody can write the subtitles?)
