SAP BW Professional (Hardcover)

~ Norbert Egger (Author) "Successful management of information is becoming increasingly important-it is now a global core competency of all enterprises..." (more)
Key Phrases: hierarchical context menu, enter the technical name, product main group, Query Designer, Web Application Designer, Administrator Workbench (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

From data modeling to optimizing data collection to maximizing reporting capabilities, this book delivers all the information that is integral to understanding and leveraging the full potential of SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW). Vital concepts are clearly explained with the help of practical examples, sample solutions, and highly detailed graphics. You'll quickly learn about the many capabilities of SAP BW as you "walk through" expert, step-by-step instruction designed to enable you to efficiently set up an SAP BW application with a user-specific data source, customized InfoCubes, data collection, and all of the necessary reporting components.

This book, which focuses on Releases 3.0 and 3.1, shows you how to avoid costly mistakes and save countless hours when you optimize key functions and essential processes.

Highlights:

• Detailed introduction to SAP BW: InfoObjects, InfoProvider, InfoCubes, Star Scheme, DataSources, InfoSources, Web Items, and a lot more
• SAP BW sample application: rules for transferal and extrapolation, InfoPackages, BEx Query, data collection, and Query-request
• Data modeling: Implementation of a column-oriented Infosource in an account-oriented InfoCube; Illustration of the SAP product hierarchy in data modeling, data collection, and reporting
• Functions of the Query Designers
• Functions of the SAP BW Web Application Designers
• Expandable SAP BW WebCockpit

About the Author

Norbert Egger is CEO of the CubeServ Group, which focuses on Business Intelligence Solutions. In 1996, he headed the development of the first Data Warehouse based on SAP, worldwide. In the interim, he has implemented over 200 projects with SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) and SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM). He also has years of experience in operating SAP-based Business Intelligence Solutions.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 437 pages
• Publisher: SAP Press (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592290175
• ISBN-13: 978-1592290178
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #714,707 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars most solid BW book available, June 22, 2005

By	just a guy "Frank" (USA) - See all my reviews

I'm glad that I didn't read all of the other reviews here before buying this book from sap press. I think the negative ones might have scared me away... We are anew BW implementation so in the last few months we have been collecting every book and training resource we could find to help bring about 14 people up to speed. I agree with many of the comments that other people have made here, especially about the screen shots being too small. but I wanted to add my own 2 cents so that people read this info in the right context. First, most of the other books we bought don't have enough screen shots at all. Second, most of the other books are much more outdated (this one is from '04) - covers up to 3.1. All the books, including this one, don't go into enough detail, but I found that at least with the BW professional book there's enough meat to help give you a good general understanding of how things work and enough technical details to teach you the basics. I we were more experienced, I think we could even get more out of it, and hopefully we will in the next few months. So, overall - there are some shortcomings, but that seems to be the case for all the BW books on the market. For $70, i really don't see how anyone could not get good value from this. We do have other sap press books that are better than this one (some of them are truly exceptional) but i've talked with the other guys and girls on the team and even with the faults we agree that it's still the best BW book we have seen yet. I think they are releasing some new books on 3.5 later this year.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I don't recommend this book, May 13, 2005

By	ABAP reader "antlese" (Canada) - See all my reviews

I read the reviews... some positive and some negative, but I decided to buy it even though it had several poor reviews. It was a mistake.

The book has very little theory, just a whole lot or screen shots that you need a magnifying glass to read. Looks like the author just gathered together some documentation from one of his projects or something.

I'm a certified ABAP consultant with over 5 years of SAP experience, so I know my way around SAP fairly well. But I was really confused after reading this book. I didn't find it helpfull at all, and I probably won't waste my time trying to finish it.

Some SAP-Press books are really good, like the HR book and the Worlflow book. But keep your money and don't buy this one.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Almost unreadable!, June 29, 2006

By	Mark Allen (San Francisco, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While the book has considerable content, the author does an exceptionally poor job of introducing basic concepts and seems to have a problem with basic English grammar.

An example: In the "SAP Business Information Warehouse - Overview" section, which supposedly introduces the reader to an overview of SAP BW, under a side heading of "InfoObjects as InfoProviders", you have the following:

Master-data-bearing characteristics as InfoProviders provide reporting with the master data tables of the attributes and texts of the particular characteristics involved".

Besides the fact that this sentence does not make grammatical sense, no attempt has been made to previously define 'master-data-bearing', or to define what master data tables are. It is anyone's guess as to what 'particular characteristics' he is talking about! It also doesn't seem to make sense to have this sentence under a heading of "InfoObjects as InfoProviders"!

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example! Two sentences before this one reads "Why would you use ODS objects despite all their problems? Because it makes sense to store data at the document level in ODS objects if you think of this storage as a kind of archive that can be directly accessed with key fields that lead to it directly, such as "document number" or "item number." (sic) However, mapping the last requirement with InfoCubes (with line items) offers better performance.

Forgive my ignorance here, but what the hell is the "last requirement" referring to in this sentence?

My advice - Avoid this book!!! For someone who attempts to use this as an introduction to SAP BW it is unreadable and I would imagine that the appalling grammar would make it barely readable for someone who DOES know SAP BW!