Customer Reviews

Business Objects XI: Creating Universes with Designer XI

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Again, Robert Schmidt did a superb job with his BO
Universe Designer book. I've found answers right away to many
questions I had in mind for long time! I could have
gone to heavy BO documentation, but Robert's book
saved my time, a lot of time! He gives very good
examples on report context (previous book) and
universe context. I specially like his examples for fan and chasm
traps.

The video is so efficient in teaching! Also we can see
graphs better with the new landscape format, thank you so much
Robert for making this subject easier! Hope to see more book by you !

While there are pieces of this book that are very useful for Universe newbies, like myself, there are far too many things that have been left out. It's obvious that this book is based on Mr Schmidt's training class since things that you would see in person (like intermediate steps taken to get from A to D) are not in the book itself. You have to rely too heavily on the video segments that are on the CD to fill in the gaps - video should augment the text, not replace it.

This is the third book I have bought by Robert Schmidt. I learned to design reports from his book "Creating documents with Business Objects". It is an excellent resource book. I learned to design advance level reports using his book and I always keep it as a reference. In Business Objects, the Help menu does not offer much help when you look for answers. His book is a better resource then the BO Documentation. He has explained everything in a very clear and concise manner.
In his book and CBT on "Business Objects XI: Creating Universes with Designer XI", again he has done a marvelous job in explaining basic but important aspects of creating universes. I would highly recommend both the book (for reference) and CBT( to learn faster and have a better understanding of concepts). He has given good examples on report context and universe context. The presentations are very clear. The real world examples make is so much easier to understand the concepts.
I am very much impressed by the author . Whenever I had a problem, he immediately answered my questions with the explanations. He will go an extra mile and will even call you to help you out. So, rest assure your investment will not be wasted.

Excellent examples (though some of them could have been developed further). Working with "real" cases makes everything so much easier to get a grip of. A terrific book for everyone who wants to learn more about the mysteries of creating universes.

After reading fewer than 20 pages of this book, I have already spotted so many clear and obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes that it makes me seriously question whether or not any editing was done on this book at all. Here are just a few examples:

"As I have already mention..."
"In my experience, this is usually the case for me." (Redundant.)
"This is the case in many companies, but as I have mention, many companies implement logins the manner they feel is best."
"This may be a good option for someone who refreshes there reports in the morning."

Finally, on page 17 - the last page I managed to force myself to read, there is this: "Not only will he.she have to figure out why it returned only 5000 rows, he/she will have to research to find the person that can raise the limit for him. This could take some time and in the frustration, he/she may begins to complain about Business Objects. This complaining makes everybody's job more difficult. Therefore, I suggest to not set it, or make it larger rather than smaller. Most data comes from well design warehouses, and this has made the controls relatively obsolete."

After reading this last sentence, I decided to abandon the book. The technical information may be correct, but I'm not going to spend any more time on a book this expensive yet so poorly checked for content. In addition, the book's layout is in landscape format, which is in itself somewhat annoying. If I could get my money back, I certainly would.

We found this book as an excellent tool for selftraining and teaching others, too. The advantage is the amount of useful examples.