SAP and BW Data Warehousing Description:

SAP and BW Data Warehousing review:
5 stars (A very comprehensive publication) - 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.
2 stars (Basic BW Book) - This book gives some information about BW. 80% of the content is about background and peripheral information. What is ERP? How project team should be formulated, etc. 20% information is about BW. This information is very basic. It is not complete. You may want to buy electronic version. Information may be worth $6. But I would not recommend buying the "paper" book. Very ordinary book with elementary content.
5 stars (Best BW treatise available on the market today) - 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.