SAP Press
Book review: Reporting and Analysis with SAP BusinessObjects
For the past months I’ve been busy reading (and listening) a bunch of interesting tech books so it’s time for another review. It looks like SAP Press is updating its book portfolio this year, since after the Integrating SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.x with SAP Netweaver book I posted about in January we now also have a second edition of Reporting and Analysis with SAP BusinessObjects, and in April the successor to Creating Dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects is planned for release.
This is a good thing. We’ve seen lots of changes in just a few years; BI4 has been release, new product names are introduced, integration has been improved and so on. If you are just entering the new SAP BusinessObjects world and you would follow the ‘old’ books and documentation it would only get you confused and probably frustrated. We don’t need that. The book is updated for release 4.0 FP3.
So let’s have a look at this new Reporting and Analysis with SAP BusinessObjects book, which is again written by Ingo Hilgefort, who is one of the ultimate gurus on SAP BusinessObjects and SAP BW tooling and integration and has been blogging and writing books on these topics since SAP acquired BusinessObjects a few years back. Follow this guy if you want to keep updated and learn more.
This book is really an overall overview of the complete SAP BusinessObjects reporting portfolio. It starts with the basics by describing the different reporting capabilities in just a few pages. A lot of SAP BI consultants still can’t name the five main BI tooling areas so there is nothing wrong to start with this again.
Posted in: Books, Knowledge sharing, New technology, SAP BusinessObjectsNew Book: Integrating SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.x with SAP NetWeaver
SAP Press recently released Integrating SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.x with SAP NetWeaver by Ingo Hilgefort. This book is the successor to the 2009 Integrating SAP Business Objects XI 3.1 BI Tools with SAP NetWeaver and is now updated with content on the latest SAP BusinessObjects 4 (BI4) release.
In this book Hilgefort explains how we can setup the (new) BI4 platform on top of a SAP BW or SAP ECC environment. He does this by covering the complete implementation cycle: First he goes through the installation steps for the SAP BusinessObjects server and client tools (Crystal Reports, Dashboards, Live Office, Analysis and the BI Platform Client tools like the Universe Designer and the Information Design Tool). This is done in a very detailed step-by-step manner, discussing every installer screen that will appear in the process. This really is very helpful the first time you have to do this! This extremely detailed approach is followed throughout the whole book.
Each front-end tool has a chapter dedicated to it in which the several data connectivity scenarios are discussed for the specific tool. These chapters all have the following approach: First all possible connectivity options are discussed. As you can see the overview figure for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (Xcelsius) now really has become art. 🙂
Next the supported and unsupported SAP BW elements are shown in a table for each connectivity option. Also a metadata mapping is given for the BEx Query elements, showing for example how a navigational attribute or variable is treated by the front-end tool. I also like the translations of the terms used in SAP BusinessObjects, like Key figure becomes Measure and Variable is called Prompt. All these overviews make things very clear.
To get you started these chapters all have a Create your first report section, that shows you step-by-step how you can create a simple report with each tool and how to set up the several connections. Again, a lot of screenshots are used here so even if you haven’t worked with some of the tools yet, you will learn fast on how to configure the data connection. Good stuff!
Live Office and BI Web Services (QaaWS) haven’t been forgotten. There roles have become less important with the new connectivity options in BI4 but they can still be used. Hilgefort discusses this situation and shows how to use them in combination with Dashboards. The book finishes with chapters on report publications and SAP Portal integration, which makes this book very very complete.
Just like all the other books written by Ingo Hilgefort you really should pick up this one! Not only as a reference guide but also to go through the step-by-step sections to get a good understanding of the several connectivity options when integration BI4 with SAP. Also make sure you check his site/blog which is totally dedicated to the SAP BI integration subject.
Posted in: Books, Knowledge sharing, New technology, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BWBook review: Discover ABAP
I have been working with SAP BW for some years now and ABAP coding has always been a pain in the ass for me. Fact is, also within BW you can’t really get around without any ABAP knowledge. It is used to enhance data extractors, to transform the data within the BW data model (with the start, field, end and expert routines in transformations) and to create variables to make dynamic selections in queries, DTP’s and InfoPackages.
So most of the time I just looked at some pieces of existing code, copied it, searched Google or SAP Help, tweaked it a bit so it eventually did what I wanted it to do, and went on. Just like I managed to do this with html, php and other coding languages for the last 15 years. If things got too complex I turned to a ABAP-consultant who normally managed to solve these problems in a few minutes doing some magic tricks that always seem simple when you read the code afterwards.
Now I found this book Discover ABAP by Karl-Heinz Kühnhauser ($39,95) which promises to give you a 101 course on the ABAP basics for us n00bs, so I decided to try it. Although this book is on the market for a few years already I still want to acknowledge it here.
This book is easy to read, gives many many examples, explains every concept in details and keeps things simple to understand. Kühnhauser demonstrates how to get the data from tables, use variables, transform or modify values, make calculations with them, use internal tables and how to set up logical expressions. Furthermore the Function Modules are discussed and the book shows how you can use them in your code.
I think that over 70% of the book’s text consist of examples or explaining them (line by line!!) which is very important for newcomers. All features of the ABAP editor are explained and it shows you how to really use the Debugger.
Since I only want to use ABAP in the BW domain (no, I don’t have any ambition to be a ABAP programmer someday!) I could fast-read/skip most of the sections on the data dictionary, creating database tables and building selection screens. But I think still 80%+ of the book was useful for me.
The only thing I miss in this book is the follow up advice on where to go next if you want to learn more. But if you are curious about the basics of ABAP you should check out this book for sure!
Posted in: Books, SAPBI 2011 Amsterdam recap
Last week I attended the 3 day conference part of the SAPinsider BI2011 event in Amsterdam. Earlier I posted my expectations here so it’s now time for some evaluations.
Keynote
The conference started with a classic keynote with cameras, enormous screens, demos and some high-level managerial talks from Sanjay Poonen and Jason Rose. The only things I can remember from this were the various very cool iPad apps that were nicely demonstrated and that there were 1400 people attending the event (BI2011, HR2011, GRC2011 and Financials2011 combined).
Sessions
So I expected to hear some informative things in three areas at BI2011: HANA, SAP BW 7.3 and SAP HR reporting with SAP BW. The sessions for first two completely succeeded in this, the SAP HR reporting area on the other hand was a big disappointment. Based on the session’s descriptions I expected to learn more on SAP HR data in combination with SAP BW reporting, since this would be very helpful for my current project. Unfortunately only SAP queries where discussed in the first session and the second session just went through the standard BW tooling, without any actual reference to SAP HR data. Maybe my expectation level was completely off, but this was just a waste of time.
The sessions on BI4 that I attended (WebI & Analysis) could have been more detailed but were okay overall. The session on Crystal Report was cancelled last minute because the speaker couldn’t make it to Amsterdam in time. Too bad.
I loved those tips & tricks sessions! This is where you really learn things. Top two here were the session of Jesper Christensen on data load improvements and my final session on the last day by Shell on their experiences regarding the SAP BusinessObjects integration with SAP BW. Very good job guys!
Posted in: SAPSAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook released
I am very happy to announce the release of the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook I worked on the past year with co-author David Lai and the team at Packt Publishing.
In this book we discuss over 90 so-called recipes that give a step-by-step explanation of the possibilities of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, formerly known as Xcelsius to create advanced dashboards. We cover the ins & outs of the Dashboard Design components, creating drill-downs, applying dynamic visibility, alerts and exporting & publishing. Also we show you how to improve the look and feel of your dashboard and how to use the spreadsheet in an optimal way. Furthermore dashboard connectivity options (i.e. SAP BW, BI4, XML) are included and we discuss the top third-party add-ons for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards like the GMaps plugin and Antivia XWIS.
Each recipe is supported by a large number of screenshots and for most of the recipes we included XLF source files for even better understanding. Throughout the book you will find lots of tips, tricks and best practices.
The book is published in eBook (ePub and DRM-free PDF) and paperback format and is available from the Packt Publishing website. Here you can find more info on the book, the table of contents and a sample chapter. Also this is the place to download the XLF and SWF source files we provide with the book.
