Customer Reviews

ALE, EDI & IDoc Technologies for SAP

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've read both the Arvind Nagpal and Rajeev Kasturi books, and I conclude that the Nagpal book is much better for me, a person who has been doing SAP EDI for several years.

I do not know either of these authors. I do not have anything to do with the publishers. I bet this is more than many of the reviewers here can say!

I know that sheer bulk is not what we are buying here, but let's do some numbers to examine one aspect of the comparison. The Kasturi book starts with 388 pages. Well over 100 pages in the back are tables out of SAP that we can print any time we want (or save a tree and just pull up a screen). Since I've worked with SAP EDI for a few years, I didn't expect a lot of things to be new to me in the first 3 or 4 chapters, but man, there was nothing even moderatly interesting to me in the early part of the book. That left about 150 pages in the middle that, I'll admit, I only skimmed. But the per-page cost of those few possibly valuable pages is quite high! There was a strong ALE / example flavor to the book. As if someone wrote about a few of their favorite implementations.

Now, the Nagpal book starts with quite a few more pages (786). There is NOT a huge section of this book dedicated to stuff I could print out of or look up in SAP. Yes, some of this stuff is 'light' too. And again, I'll admit to skimming a lot of it that I didn't have a pressing need to know right now. And yes, there are quite a few print-screens in the book (but I LIKE print-screens). The bottom line is that I, a person who's been using SAP-EDI quite a while, found the Nagpal title MORE INTERESTING, INFORMATIVE, and found it had MORE INFORMATION than the Kasturi book.

--Dale--

Thank you for an excellent book! I think it would be safe to say that this book has saved my company more than $30K in consulting costs already. I expect the savings to increase because his recommendations will allow us to implement a system with the proper controls in place to avoid costly errors. I have found Mr. Nagpal's book an invaluable reference to assist me in connecting our SAP 4.0B system to our major Canadian retailer customers.

I think SAP or the EAI vendors should give this book out with every licence! It's like a patient (and affordable!) SAP EDI consultant walking you through every step of the way.

I own both books and this one is by far the most useful. We did a customer master file load using ALE techniques and some program names were covered in the other book but Mr. Nagpal's book is the one I refer to daily.

If you have to do EDI with SAP then don't hesitate to buy this book.

We're using version 3.1H (pretty old) and the samples in this book were lacking key information. It's better than nothing (much better) but getting the examples to work was very challanging. It also lacks some key information such as how to map EDI loops into IDOC structure definitions. It's worth the money, but only because there's no competition.

The book does not have an organized approach to presenting ALE and EDI or it may have one but that is only in the mind the author. There is no good practical information. Everything that is in the book can be found somewhere else like SAP online help and published ALE, EDI papers. If you are looking for advices resulting from personal experience, you won't find it here. Save your money for something else.

This 2nd edition is a perfect starting point for learning about SAP EDI and IDOC. I recommended this book to all my SAP friends.
If you want to learn about SAP Integration, this is the book.

I hope the authors will spend some chapters about SAP Business Connector and other standard integration tools in the next version. This will complete this bible about SAP EDI/Idoc.

This is an excellent book that has really helped me though many tough times, despite doing ALE for 3+ years now.I conduct training sessions prior to the start of an implementation and pre-go live training. This is the book I suggest every trainee should have to help them in their life with IDOCs.It is just as helpfull for first time users as it is for vetrans dealing with IDOCs on a daily basis. This is definetely the most popular book at my current client among all the other SAP books.

This book is out of print everywhere, but I just brought a brand new one earlier this month. The publisher still have about 20 copies left. Just call THOMSON LEARNING at 1-800-354-9706. Good Luck!

I have been programming in the EDI & Idoc interface for two years and every time I pick up this book I learn more. This is the most comprehensive and complete reference that is available on this subject. Arvind Nagpal has a very readable writing style that keeps your interest. I highly recommend this book.

This is a good starting point for EDI, ALE and Idocs. It gives a good overview of what is required and how to map out a plan. Some of the specifics are a bit too general, but again, this is just meant to be a starting point. From a high level perspective of managers and Project managers, this is a good book to have on hand. It will give you a good idea of what your implementation will require.

but where afraid to ask.

If you are new to SAP and the concepts of IDOCS and message types etc, this book is for you !!

Worth having as a reference book on any shelf.