{"id":1658,"date":"2012-03-05T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2012-03-05T15:36:43","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T13:36:43","slug":"book-review-reporting-and-analysis-with-sap-businessobjects-ingo-hilgefort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/book-review-reporting-and-analysis-with-sap-businessobjects-ingo-hilgefort","title":{"rendered":"Book review: Reporting and Analysis with SAP BusinessObjects"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

For the past months I’ve been busy reading (and listening<\/a>) a bunch of interesting tech books so it’s time\u00a0for another review. It looks like SAP Press is updating its book portfolio this year, since after the Integrating\u00a0SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.x with SAP Netweaver<\/a><\/strong> book I posted about in January we now also have a second edition of Reporting and Analysis with\u00a0SAP BusinessObjects<\/a><\/strong>, and in April the successor to Creating Dashboards with\u00a0SAP BusinessObjects<\/a><\/strong> is planned for release.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So let’s have a look at this new Reporting and Analysis with\u00a0SAP BusinessObjects<\/strong> book, which is again written by Ingo Hilgefort<\/strong>, who is one of the ultimate gurus on\u00a0SAP 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<\/a>\u00a0this guy if you want to keep updated and learn more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This book is really an overall overview of the complete SAP BusinessObjects reporting portfolio<\/strong>. It starts with the basics by describing the different reporting capabilities in just a few pages. A lot of SAP BI consultants still\u00a0can\u2019t name the five main BI tooling areas so there is nothing wrong to start with this again.<\/p>\n

The book uses a set of business scenarios<\/strong> for reporting which all have a list of specific requirements. Throughout the book these requirements are plotted to the several tooling options. This gives you a good insight in what tool to pick in which situation. Furthermore it shows you the different audiences\/users for each tool.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

All tools are discussed in their own chapter, by first giving an overview of the data connectivity<\/strong> options. Next the requirements<\/strong> of the business scenarios are discussed. The requirements that can’t be fulfilled with the tool are listed and an explanation is given why this is and what other tool would be a better fit. This is really informative and you’ll easily get to know the different purposes of each tools.<\/p>\n

Next the options<\/strong> of the tool itself are introduced and a step-by-step example<\/strong> is given. I’m not sure what to think of these sections. If you already worked with some of the tools before there is little new to find here, and if you really want to dive into one of the tools you can better pick up one of the more specialized books. On the other hand, for first timers I would prefer some examples with less text and more screenshots. Some of the examples have a few hundred steps<\/strong> to follow!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So to round things up, if you are new to the SAP BusinessObjects reporting and analysis portfolio and you want to learn about the different tooling options you should definitely\u00a0get this book. If you already know about the tools, but you are not sure when to use Crystal Reports instead of Dashboards or Web Intelligence, the business scenarios approach will help you to make these decisions better. But, if you are looking to learn more about the tools\u00a0themselves you should have a look at te more tool specific books out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 Januar 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34,44,56,9],"tags":[14,121,28,25,13,283,124,105,16,285],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-knowledge-sharing","category-new-technology","category-sapbusinessobjects","tag-bi","tag-bi4","tag-dashboards","tag-explorer","tag-ingo-hilgefort","tag-sap","tag-sap-businessobjects-dashboards","tag-sap-crystal-dashboard-design","tag-sap-press","tag-xcelsius"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pKaa2-qK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1594,"url":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/new-book-integrating-sap-businessobjects-bi-platform-4-x-with-sap-netweaver-ingo-hilgefort","url_meta":{"origin":1658,"position":0},"title":"New Book: Integrating SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.x with SAP NetWeaver","author":"Xavier Hacking","date":"January 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"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 the latest SAP BusinessObjects 4 (BI4) release. In this book\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/category\/books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Book_integrating_SAP_BI4-225x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1127,"url":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/bi4-product-names-xcelsius-dashboards","url_meta":{"origin":1658,"position":1},"title":"BI4 product names for Xcelsius","author":"Xavier Hacking","date":"March 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Overview of the new BI4 product naming for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (fka Xcelsius).","rel":"","context":"In "SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards"","block_context":{"text":"SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/category\/sapbusinessobjects-dashboards"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1851,"url":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/book-review-sap-netweaver-bw-and-sap-businessobjects-the-comprehensive-guide","url_meta":{"origin":1658,"position":2},"title":"Book review: SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP BusinessObjects – The Comprehensive Guide","author":"Xavier Hacking","date":"September 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's have a look at another SAP BI book that SAP Press released this year. They are on a great streak and later this year we can expect even more releases from them on HANA, Web Intelligence, ABAP for BW, SAP BusinessObjects Administration and Security. But, let's go back to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/category\/books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sapbwbocomprehensiveguide.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3181,"url":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/development-tips-for-creating-mobile-apps-with-sap-businessobjects-design-studio-and-the-sap-businessobjects-bi-platform","url_meta":{"origin":1658,"position":3},"title":"Development Tips for Creating Mobile Apps with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio and the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform","author":"Xavier Hacking","date":"March 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"My latest article for\u00a0the BI Expert online magazine is all about creating mobile\u00a0applications with SAP BusinessObjects\u00a0Design Studio. The learning objectives\u00a0are: How to set up the BI platform for mobile applications How to use the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app Constraints to consider when developing mobile Design Studio apps How to set\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio"","block_context":{"text":"SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/category\/sap-businessobjects-design-studio"},"img":{"alt_text":"biexpert","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/biexpert-1.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3219,"url":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/sap-bi-product-name-shake-up-the-2017-edition","url_meta":{"origin":1658,"position":4},"title":"SAP BI product name shake-up: the 2017 edition","author":"Xavier Hacking","date":"May 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Another year, another set of product names for our beloved SAP BI tools. Seemingly out of nowhere a list of new names were presented last week at the SAPPHIRENOW event\u00a0in Orlando FL. Even after all the name changes we had in the past 10 years ('member Xcelsius?), this still came\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Featured"","block_context":{"text":"Featured","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/category\/featured"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2144,"url":"https:\/\/www.hackingsap.com\/blog\/book-review-mastering-sap-businessobjects-analysis-edition-for-olap-with-sap-netweaver-bw","url_meta":{"origin":1658,"position":5},"title":"Book review: Mastering SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP with SAP NetWeaver BW","author":"Xavier Hacking","date":"March 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP is probably the BI4 tool I have spent the least time in yet. It can be seen as the successor to the BEx Web Analyzer and it is the web counterpart of SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Office. 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