Product Description

"This book is insightful and thought-provoking for even the most seasoned SAP BW individual."
-Richard M. Dunning, Chair, American SAP Users Group
Written by the leading experts in the field, this comprehensive guide shows you how to implement the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) and create useful applications for business analysis of company-wide data. You'll quickly learn how to design, build, analyze, and administer the data and information in the SAP BW component. The authors present the material in a way that reflects the process an organization goes through during a software implementation. They begin with an introduction to the fundamentals of data warehousing and business intelligence, helping you determine if SAP BW is right for your organization. The book then focuses on the business content and options available when trying to deliver value from the data stored in the SAP BW. And it includes a methodology for implementing the BW, such as data modeling and techniques for capturing and transforming data.
With this book, you'll discover the options available in SAP BW 3.0 and explore a new way to drive business performance. It will show you how to:
* Tackle such challenges as eliminating poor data quality
* Develop an information model in order to properly deploy SAP BW
* Utilize ETL, data storage, information access, analysis, and presentation services
* Schedule, monitor, archive, and troubleshoot data loads
* Effectively plan and manage the performance of a data warehouse
The companion Web site provides useful guides and templates for configuring your system, industry case studies, and additional updates.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #905260 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 516 pages

From the Back Cover
"This book is insightful and thought-provoking for even the most seasoned SAP BW individual."
–Richard M. Dunning, Chair, American SAP Users Group

Written by the leading experts in the field, this comprehensive guide shows you how to implement the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) and create useful applications for business analysis of company-wide data. You’ll quickly learn how to design, build, analyze, and administer the data and information in the SAP BW component. The authors present the material in a way that reflects the process an organization goes through during a software implementation. They begin with an introduction to the fundamentals of data warehousing and business intelligence, helping you determine if SAP BW is right for your organization. The book then focuses on the business content and options available when trying to deliver value from the data stored in the SAP BW. And it includes a methodology for implementing the BW, such as data modeling and techniques for capturing and transforming data.

With this book, you’ll discover the options available in SAP BW 3.0 and explore a new way to drive business performance. It will show you how to:

• Tackle such challenges as eliminating poor data quality
• Develop an information model in order to properly deploy SAP BW
• Utilize ETL, data storage, information access, analysis, and presentation services
• Schedule, monitor, archive, and troubleshoot data loads
• Effectively plan and manage the performance of a data warehouse

The companion Web site provides useful guides and templates for configuring your system, industry case studies, and additional updates.

About the Author
KEVIN McDONALD is CEO of COMPENDIT, a consulting organization specializing in data warehousing and SAP. Prior to working at COMPENDIT, he was a corporate spokesperson for SAP throughout the launch of the SAP BW in North America.
ANDREAS WILMSMEIER is a managing director at COMPENDIT and was part of the SAP BW development team.
DAVID C. DIXON is a director of Business Intelligence at COMPENDIT and was a SAP "platinum"consultant.
W. H. INMON is the acknowledged "father of data warehousing" and partner in billinmon.com, a Web site for information on data warehousing and related technologies.

Customer Reviews

Excellent architecture perspective
This book offers an excellent comparison of BW functions and capabilities against a data warehouse architecture envisioned by Bill Inmon. There might be 2 or 3 ways to build a business solution and this book is good at recommending one if not "the best".

On the other hand, this book is useless if you are planning to seat in front of the terminal and begin using BW. A good book that could complement this one is "SAP BW A Step-by-Step Guide".

A nice book of of BW
I've read 2 books on BW, compared with another book I¡¯ve read, this book is on BW 3.0B which is a more mature DW product of SAP, it not only focuses on the BW transactional stuff but also tries to explain the detailed theories and business cases which are the more valuable points for me. If you¡¯re a BW beginner, this book may not be suitable since it¡¯s not going to teach you how to extract data, setup info source , create data target or create queries in a detail instruction way, but instead bring you a very completely high-level picture of BW architecture and solutions.

The best chapters I would prefer are: Chapter 4 ¨C Information Modeling; Chapter 6 ¨C ETL Services and Chapter 8 ¨C Analytic Application.

Lots of concepts and theory. Very little hands-on guidance.
This book does a good job of explaining BW concepts and theory. But there is no hands on guidance or step by step walkthroughs. After I understand the general workflow and overview of what is supposed to happen, I needed other books and guidance to figure out the specifics of what needs to get done.

For an SAP expert new to cubes and associated concepts, this would probably be very helpful. For someone like myself, who has used a few other BI/cube products, but is new to SAP, this book is a poor choice.