Customer Reviews

SAP and BW Data Warehousing: How to Plan and Implement

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

 

 

I jumped ahead to read Part 2 on the BW, since I am the lead for a BW implementation and that section is of utmost interest to me. After having scoured the market for instructive books on the BW, I can now finally say I found one that takes a matter-of-fact approach to unraveling the mysteries of the Business Warehouse. This is an excellent book for all members of an organization's BW team - all the way from the Chief Information Technology Officer (probably the most important but the least likely to read the book) down to the developers working in the trenches.

Having come to the Business Warehouse project with a background in both Inmon- and Kimball-based data warehousing, I especially like the way Mr. Kahn explains BW theory from a traditional point of view. The SAP classes that I have attended and the other BW books that I have read make very little attempt to explain the BW architecture from the perspective of traditional data warehousing theory. Until reading this book, I often felt that I would have been better off coming to the BW table with no prior knowledge of data warehousing. Also, I have spent the last 8 years working on 3 different data warehousing projects and can assure you that Mr. Kahn's advice on pitfalls to avoid are right on the money. This book is a must read for anyone involved in or about to embark upon a SAP Business Warehouse project.

I am going back now to read Part 1 on implementing SAP. I was so excited about the BW portion, however, that I had to share my thoughts with other potential readers.

This book covers SAP's transaction system and its Business Warehouse data warehouse. The SAP part, Part A, covers 32% of the book (pages 1-134). Part B, which is 68% of the book, covers BW from pages 135 through 419. While it includes a wealth of general information about both the transaction and data warehouse systems, it also contains technical information that provides very good information. In Chapter B12 (72 pages from pg 250-322), Creating and Loading InfoCubes, the step-by-step procedure is shown via screenshots. Chapter 14 (31 pages), Creating Queries with BEx, shows the step-by-step procedure for creating a query. These two chapters, covering 103 pages, alone constitute 24.5% of the whole book (and 36% of the BW part of the book). The book also covers the planning and design, which is something I found very useful. Ideally, the book should be divided into two books. However, for those who desire to get an overall picture of the environment (after all BW typically is installed in the SAP environment), this is a great book, very easy to follow and understand even for novices, though somewhat expensive. I would not suggest this book to someone, though, who might think that this book will enable one to develop into a BW developer, for which more extensive training is required.

I am thankful to all the reviewers, who bring value to the readers and Amazon.com, by providing the good and bad points of a book.

I feel it is my obligation to respond to a totally incorrect comment from Mr. Rao, which can mislead readers due to his own lack of understanding of the concepts involved. I firmly stand behind what I have written, especially on page 145, which Mr. Rao has questioned.

Whether the book is useful or not, the market decides, where this book has been selling out faster than expected, with practically no returns.

Mr. Boudville has raised a genuine issue with the less than perfect screenshots (he has indicated diagrams, which actually are of good quality). Due to the dpi differences between the screenshots and high-quality printing requirements, which is often an issue with such screenshots when they are placed in books, they are not excellent.

Regarding why I did not use the conventional publishers, the reason is that I do not want them to publish my books as I can make 10 times the amount they give as royalties. An offer was made for this book but I turned it down. FYI, I have been published by John Wiley and Sons.

I encourage readers to document both the positive and negative aspects of my book!

This book is a waste of paper. It is not even good enough to meet its alleged goal of providing "an overview of SAP and BW". You can learn more by simply going to the SAP Web site and reading their marketing pablum, which is what this book amounts to, at best. Save your money.

This book doesn't help much those who have taken training on BW or who have been working on BW, as the book contains two chapters that may help you a bit on BW screens: one on Infocubes, the other on BEx. As put in title, the book covers more about planning: the part A about SAP in general, and 60 percent of Part B on SAP BW planning, etc.

As an aside, I have no problems reading e-book bought here, but you should use the latest Adobe reader.

Excellent book. Coudl navigate through the book and easily pick and choose chapters of interest to me without getting lost, even though the book covers lots of technical stuff, especially in the BW part. Liked the business perspective the author brings.

I found this book useful in understanding the structure and construct around BW - specifically how a BW project ought to be implemented.

If you are looking for a step-by-step BW book then this AINT it.. you would be better off with Biao Fu's book. But this book has all the info that a young consultant needs but would not get in any other book or courses. Something that only real world consulting teaches but which Khan has brought out real well!

I do not usually review self published books, because the quality is typically bad, but decided to make an exception here. Khan's work is well written. The quality of the arguments presented is at a level that you might well see in a database book put out by large publishers like Pearson (Addison-Wesley) or O'Reilly. Perhaps Khan was turned down by those publishers and decided to go out on his own and self publish?

Some of the diagrams are fuzzy and low resolution. Sloppy. They should have been redrawn. It really detracts from the text.

A curious thing is that most of the other reviewers of this book have only one or two reviews to their names. Especially if they wrote favourably. I'm wondering if the author induced some of his friends to plug the book, where they had no prior track record of reviewing.

Could be better if it was sold as two separate books as readers will not be interested in the whole book. Great content.

Covers a lot of ground. Excellent book. Would have been better if it was published as two seperate books instead of one so that it would be useful to two seperate groups of readers(SAP and BW professionals).