Question:
I wish to remind the promoter of this venture. The fact is BW consultants are sitting without work. My company when I asked my boss for subscribing to this bluntly told me that the company is planning to replace our SAP BW system by an Oracle data warehouse reason SAP BW was proving very expensive for the company and they wanted to get rid of SAP BW.
When this is the scenario forget about companies putting in BW people want to get rid of BW and this company is asking us to spend $495 for a subscription - forget it.
The same thing they are 3 BW books in the market all absolutely crap the one from Kevin Mcdonald of Compendit a SAP BW consulting company all that Kevin with WH Inmon does is try to sell us SAP BW. This is not the crap we want, people want to learn SAP BW it is absolute BW theory after reading this book you would not have learnt even to create a BW query or a infoobject just shocking dry theory and added that injury the authors shamelessly provide testimonials of some people who reckon it is a very good book. All these people perhaps are still in 1999 when companies thought IT was a fad and would throw any money to run any IT system. None of these people are living in year 2002 where IT managers are questioning the existence of various IT systems to wring the last dollar out of IT investments. Please do not trust all these books and their authors you cannot learn BW reading these books and magazines. The only way to learn BW is attend the SAP training course work on a implementation for atleast 1 to 2 years with a experienced consultant may you would know BW then. Do not blow your hard earned money on these kind of florics.
I suggest to people who are bringing these kind of magazines and publications and seeking opinion are perhaps sitting on a project that as plenty of money and nothing to do and have time to look at all these worthless things. If you are serious go and deliver some serious value for your BW system to your users otherwise you are just sitting at the edge of a cliff and will be thrown out shortly once your IT manager accesses the value of your system.
I hope everybody takes it in the right spirit. Go and deliver value for your SAP BW system otherwise we are all toast hopes it makes sense. This is serious it is happening slowly and gradually across the world people are throwing out systems without a serious value.
Answer:
I could not help replying ,to disagree with your observations.
First the BW Expertonline comes from an established source. The other publications have been extremely good in content. I know every SAP consultant wants to get the best rate. But when it comes to investing to upgrade/hone their skills they want it free, source material unauthorisedly or attend training at Unauthorized institutes!! You have a choice to subscribe or not. You and i can't take shots at someone carrying out activities legally.
As for replacing SAP BW with Oracle DW is concerned , i will bet my money that, it will be a night mare extracting data fron SAP the way BW does. Mu guess,the implementation would have been carried out by one of Big 4, with guys learning on your site or other consultants who have switched from SAP ABAP/Basis/Application Modules and masqerading as BW Consultants. You know the end results.
The magazine is not meant only to serve Idle BW consultants or SAP Consultants trying to become a BW Consultnats by posting in this forum.
Answer:
The issue is that the true value proposition for BW, ease of extraction, is hurt by two factors:
1. Existing R3 reporting & the uncooperative R3 application analysts
2. Lack of understanding of what a data warehouse is
The current R3 reports hurt because of the old maxin "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Also R3 analysts feel that reporting is their job, even if they are swamped and lack understanding of the other modules.
Also, no one understands that BW provides an easier way to extract and stage data for reporting than R3 does.
However, the BW reporting layer stinks, and SAP should open the API to BI vendors so that better reporting is possible.
There are too many IT managers thinking BW is a reporting system, or BW is a data warehouse, or BW is an integration tool, or BW is ETL, or whatever, that the essential point is missed:
BW is the best way to get at R3 data, without engaging an R3 analyst in full life cycle process report development.