The key difference between SAP and Oracle
As I argued in a long article last December, Oracle is focused on helping computers do their jobs better, while SAP is focused on helping people do their jobs better. Much the same could be said of IBM. And SAP’s keen focus on process goes far beyond that of any other vendor.
It's the 'very-short-blog-that-links-to-an-even-shorter-blog'-competition. 😉
The creative writing class was asked to write a short story which had intrigue, suspense, royalty, religion and ***.
The winning entry
" [i]'Oh my God, I am pregnent!'[/i] - Thought the queen. [i]'I wonder who did it![/i]'.
The creative writing class was asked to write a short story which had intrigue, suspense, royalty, religion and ***.
The winning entry
" [i]'Oh my God, I am pregnent!'[/i] - Thought the queen. [i]'I wonder who did it![/i]'.
Why don't you try the other two links in the blog? They lead to some rather long articles, and the links in them lead to further long articles ...
Best,
CAM
But would also support Anton.
What I see in your 3-4-short-sentences blogs? Just advertising of your own PAST blog/articles/thoughts!?
You are almost correct. Most of my posts here are references to posts elsewhere -- by me or other people -- that I think might be interesting to the readers here.
Please explain to me how this is so damaging to your life that you need to complain about it.
Thanks,
CAM
I'm not complaining about it.
I just expect that the blogs I'm reading give me some information.
When I see that a few sentence blog is referring to another very short blog with a thought like "I think that A. And I don't like B." then a reasonable question is arised: "What I have known from these two blogs?".
Best regards,
Eugene
Why not save them for some other blog posts that indeed do nothing except refer to other short blog posts? That's not the situation with mine.
Thanks,
CAM
To date, you have to understand our community is used to having the content they read available immediately to them and they are not overly fond of jumping out to other websites. Granted we are not really fond of people leaving the site either - what website is. HOWEVER, from a community side, and the desire to spread knowledge and collaboration we encourage the sharing of knowledge across the board and we were very happy to learn that you were joining (RedMonk touched on that fact as well).
Your style of blogging, which is somewhat of a norm out in the Blogosphere is rather alien to SDN. The blogs here are mostly technincal based consisting of very indepth information and are more of a mini article than a "typical" blog. This is something the community looks for and expects from all bloggers on SDN; we made some changes to this basic principle of late for instance allowing more content through which is not directly related to SAP, technology and development, and a few more by adding bloggers like yourself and Melissa (culutral expert) and I'm sure we'll be seeing more in the future as well. It's a process of adaption and acceptance in terms of the content being posted (we still don't allow marketing and sales pitches or self promotion, other than sessions at conferences and books published) but I think the community will still be expecting posts that contain a bit more text and substance as opposed to just a link to another article or blog. Despite the fact that developers, especially those here are used to change, when it comes to the format of the blogs on SDN they are pretty inlfexible sometimes. With the addition of the BPX community this is now in bit of upheavel and so we are working through the stages and trying to find the right balances.
I'm sure you can understand that and I'm sure that you can understand the concerns of the community especially those who decided to step out and say something. Bottom line your content is appreciated but for the most part they would rather open your post here and read it as opposed to jumping to another post, then possibly to another one.
I'm at your disposal at anytime just like I am for every other memeber of the community and I'm sure we can work out the right balances as we usher in a new phase of blogging here on SDN, just a few bumps in the road as we start to spread the wings though.
Craig Cmehil
SDN Community & Collaboration Team
Thank you for your explanation.
As you may recall, I didn't ask to be a blogger here. Marilyn Pratt recruited me, and repeatedly urged me to accept before I finally agreed. Then she repeatedly urged me to stick with it, despite the severe aggravations of the UI and similar annoyances.
Now you're telling me that my style isn't a good fit anyway.
It would seem that there's an obvious solution -- I'll just stop blogging here. That should satisfy everybody (except perhaps Marilyn).
Thanks again for your help,
CAM
Yes I understand that Marilyn recruited you and that she is eager to have you sharing knowledge here, we all are. The Buiness Process Expert side of things is new here and most of the community is still getting used to the new types of knowledge being shared.
You have to understand that SDN has been going strong now for ahile with it's own stlyes, processes, policies and ways of doing things and that is all changing, it's evolving as SDN moves into new areas. I don't think the attitude of "I'll just take my toys and go home" is the best one nor do I think the barrage of complaints from the community is either. When I said balance, I was thinking more along the lines of you adding a simple exceprt from your blog on the "monashreport" into your blog here on SDN - the standard trackback excerpt would be fine. Thus those who choose to read your blog would then have an idea what to expect and then have the link to go over and read the rest.
So for me the "obvious solution" is a bit of give and take, what do you say about adding in the future a small excerpt something to let everyone know what they are about to go read, give them a taste of what's behind the link?
Craig
And by the way Craig, I don't know what's the intend or tone of your replies but what a turn-off!
But I do not intend to participate further in the "process" of changing SDN's "standard," let alone in finding a "balance" in the process.
CAM
If you think that content of this blog post is exactly what you are expecting from blogging, this is ok for me. Majority of LiveJournal or Blogger posts has the very same format.
However, why it makes your blood boils if someone has another opinion?
Yes, readers of SDN blogs used to get "rich content right here" form of posts rather then "content cross-linked" (the only exception is probably unofficial FAQs compiled by some bloggers).
Curt, what other option reader has (besides comments to original post) to express his opinion? If you are posting something, do you expect only positive feedback? No? Then what's wrong with Eugene's reply?
Andre, could you cite at least one sentence in Craig's reply that explicitly points out to any "militia sanctions"? I see only explanations to Eugene's feedback...
Even if you left graffiti on the wall, someone find enough place to add something that you dislike. And this post originally had too much white space on my 19" wall 😉
VS
In this flame war, I am a conscientious objector.
CAM
Let us review. I made a post that pointed people at a lot of material that was directly relevant to their jobs. I also included a joke in the post (more precisely, a pointer to the joke).
I was flamed for the joke, which was unobjectionable in every way except that people feel their time was wasted in being subjected to it.
You are supporting the flamers, and asking that I not make such jokes in the future.
I don't think such institutional blandness is conducive to good blogging. Now, that's a bias. I have put humor into top-tier Wall Street stock analyst reports, and into a long ago job interview speech at a classified research thinktank. I'm not about to step away from the somewhat lighthearted tone prevalent in the blogosphere today.
If you don't want that tone here, then you don't want me.
CAM
You write: "I was flamed for the joke..."
I don't think so, you got comments that joked about the shortness of your post and as a good measure they made fun of your joke too.
My ex boss always said lets work according to the good intention principle. Let's always assume the comments were done in good intention or at least that is how I read Anton's first two posts.
That they were interpreted as flames is rather unfortunate.
Of course SDN is mainly a German site and as everyone knows Germans don't do commedy. Especially on an official SAP site Humor is verboten. We have taken steps to ensure that these incidences will not be repeated. We hired a humor extermination officer (Of course the best candidate was a German). He is coming to the office every day in full uniform with a pickle helmet and I am surprised that the full seriousness of his authority has not come down on this thread yet. He is no one to joke around with. Be warned, his user ID is "Kein Witz".
Thought I let you know. With good intentions, Mark.
what's the needs for such negative posts? I know it's a free world around here but there's no need to use it to ventilate personal frustrations.
If you don't like it don't read it. that's the beauty of choice. you may criticize but try to make it constructive at least. we're all professionals here, aren't we?
- unreliable logins
- strange iframe layout (cant scroll with cursor)
- sso required becuase too many hosts
- instable
- confusing search
SAP might be for people, the websites arent...
Craig
WELCOME to BPX & thank you for your contribution!
somehow the content of your insightful articles was overlooked. i hope your appraisal of SAP does not change significantly (ie negatively) as a result of the feedback you've received so far from the SDN comments for this blog. please continue contributing to the "Business Process Expert" community.
your message rings loud and clear on your analysis on the focus areas of SAP and Oracle. i appreciate your contributions to the "BPX" community and hope you continue to do so in spite of a lukewarm/lackluster welcome based on the previous 21 comments...
best regards,
james
Thank you so much for the kind words!! But maybe you're biased, because you work in Palo Alto. (Which reminds me -- I'm overdo to visit there. If you drop Jennifer Bartolo a line and ask her to let you know when I'll come by, that might have the benefit for me of restarting the scheduling process.) There's where a bunch of SAP folks I'm in mutual admiration societies with hang out.
According to another SAP source, however, my blogs, and specifically this one, do not meet the standards of the SDN community. And rather than try to give the community what it wants, I've opted to take the lower-hassle, higher-benefit option of just posting on blogs that I control from start to finish.
All my blogs can be easily found via links from each other, e.g. starting with the articles linked above.
Small world, REALLY! Ms. Bartolo literally sits a couple meters way from me in the Palo Alto cube farm. Worlds apart though -- development vs analyst relations (AR). The blog you provided is much like an Easter Egg - something you have to find (or follow) versus have laid out in front of you. Finding the egg is joy in itself.
What has been common in the SDN community is the latter (highly technical - detailed content), which is not necesarily the case or expectation (yet!) in the BPX community. While I cannot speak for the other commentators on this post, I encourage you to continue to contribute in any fashion you see fit - especially when you're an advocate for SAP and know our competition so well. =P
What was lost in the following commentaries was acknowledgement of the great stuff you've written about SAP - for that I hope you accept this BPX community-member's apologies.
Cheers,
james
Small world, REALLY! Ms. Bartolo literally sits a couple meters way from me in the Palo Alto cube farm. Worlds apart though -- development vs analyst relations (AR). The blog you provided is much like an Easter Egg - something you have to find (or follow) versus have laid out in front of you. Finding the egg is joy in itself.
What has been common in the SDN community is the latter (highly technical - detailed content), which is not necesarily the case or expectation (yet!) in the BPX community. While I cannot speak for the other commentators on this post, I encourage you to continue to contribute in any fashion you see fit - especially when you're an advocate for SAP and know our competition so well. =P
What was lost in the following commentaries was acknowledgement of the great stuff you've written about SAP - for that I hope you accept this BPX community-member's apologies.
Cheers,
james
I only got half way through the commetns on Curts blog and I am amazed. Yes it was a bit strange to have a blog with some links to other blogs but I did not think that there were any rules against this.
The concept that SDN users are used to consuming information in a certain way means that a status quo is being formed which is kind of paradox when you think that SAP encourages business to adopt its software as standard (wherever possible), which means the business needs to move away from the status quo.
I will leave the argument to who is best to analysts and sales people. From my incredibly biased opinion, SAP has always focused on Business Processes which provides a lot more scope in the technology space. Microsoft is doing the same but from a different angle.
Bernd - There are always issues with technology it is up to the SAP community to make sure these issues are communicated in a constructive way so teh product can improve and gain further credibility. Understanding limitations and possibilities and obligation the SAP community has to the business community.
Regards
Paul Chambers
Appreciate the opinion.
Unfortunate flame war.
Hilarious, though.
Blog on.
Wilbert
Jeez, if I didn't link to other blogs I honestly don't think I'd have much to write about. But more to the point, the links to other blogs were actually links to Monash's primary blog displayed in a frame inside of SDN, so what's the big deal?
I read this entire comment thread and honestly feel disappointed that anyone on SDN should feel it necessary to decide what is appropriate and what is not (Craig, I really do understand your point... this is not directed at you).
The ultimate arbiter or what is appropriate on SDN is whoever is reading it... don't like the post, don't read it, but also don't suggest that it should not be available for anyone else to read either. If you have a complaint, post it as a comment such as what was done here, but let's agree that there is no need for, or benefit from any self-appointed style police.
You are a prolific blogger. I am at awe how many high quality posts you are able to write day in and day out.
Please take into considerations that for many if not most SDNers English is a second language (me included)
"Yes it was a bit strange to have a blog with some links to other blogs but I did not think that there were any rules against this."
My reading of this sentence (and I may be wrong) is: It is strange that there is a blog post with "only" links to other blogs and no more details to why they are interesting.
Total different meaning. Therefore absolutely links to interesting information regarding development and SAP are very welcomed, actually encouraged, we have a Topic Beyond SAP after all. Some explanation why that link is interesting is common courtesy in my blogging world, but may be I am old school.
You write: "The ultimate arbiter or what is appropriate on SDN is whoever is reading it... don't like the post, don't read it ..."
That is a signal to noise issue. Following your suggestion would mean we could open up the SDN blogs to all SDNers. What would happen is SDNers would try out that functionality and a lot of "just testing" posts would happen, which in your opinion are O.K. because you don't need to read them. Be honest, you would be the first to unsubscribe from such a feed.
It is tough to keep maximum freedom and quality on a community blog like this one.
Best, Mark.
1) I do not question the usefulness of pointing to some interesting external content, I just want to get an info on what to expect there.
2) I indeed consider the link behind 'far beyond that of any other vendor' to be useless and actually do believe that the author's motivation is to only raise the hit-rate on his website or his search engine ranking or whatever (one could have been repeating this joke - if it were ment to be a joke - right here without much effort)
3) IMHO there's no need for any style or quality police (and no need to accuse people of such a thing) because as we can see this is a self organizing system here - write something questionable -> get the appropriate comments -> use your freedom to do it again OR do it different next time
I'd like to go one step further and say, after having read the two other blogs, they are very trivial with respect to their content _in_my_opinion_.
But that's what you get when you go out into the public with your thoughts. Some like it, some don't. No need to feel insulted as long as an appropriate level of respect is in place.
my 2 cents,
anton
First and foremost, thanks for the compliment.
Your comment about English as a second language is something that everyone involved with SAP needs to be aware of, it's always helpful to be reminded of it. In this case the blog links referenced were links to posts by the author himself, surely this is not exceptional nor shortchanging the audience in any way.
The last issue you raise is probably the most important one in this thread. Are you going to continue to treat SDN as a monolithic blog/web/portal/whatever or are you going to evolve it into a "spaces" model where I don't have just one thread to subscribe to but thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions?) that are merely the front door to a vibrant and diverse community? You must surely realize that there is a point at which SDN collapses upon itself because it is available through one portal and one feed.
With the addition of sub communities like the BPX and the Scripting Languages things are not what they used to be. SDN of course still has an expects a certain standard but the realm of information and how that information is presented and consumed is changing.
Just in the last few days SDN adopted new RSS feeds and began to send our blogs out to the outside world, within the next few days Email subscriptions to the blog topics will be online. We are continuiously working to enhance our ability to provide information to not only our user base but that of the outside world as well. NNTP, Wiki and page subscriptions are being discussed.
One of our challenges though are addressing the differences of what is other side of the wall, SDN is beginning to lower our walls and we have to proceed with caution. For example, in diving after being so deep and starting to come up to the surface often times one has to make a decompression stop to equalize the pressure. SDN, at least in my opinion, has been down deep in the trenches of the SAP world and now as we rise up to new level we need to make fequent decompression stops. We blew this one and popped an eardrum (we lost a good blogger) simply because we tried to go to fast and did not give things a chance to equalize.
As I said the content provided here was good stuff and I would like to see more - our community just happened to be used to a certain standard a standard we are not overly keen on removing but evolving is something we are willing to do.
We've made some important moves in the right direction, the fact that a person can jump right into their topic are a of choice (e.g. Mobile and have immediate access to all related areas and content, we just need to make those frequent stops to equalize that pressure from outside and inside.
Will we open SDN blogging up to every single member and get rid of our stringent application process, doubtful, have we given many people of a chance to blog with a result of a single entry, of course, have we started to see some real stars come out of the SDN Blogosphere - most certainly, is the community ready for a flood of blogs based simply a person's desire to blog - I don't think so. Is our system ready for it - not at all. Is this all a problem/issue that can be overcome - absolutely!
I keep coming back to the same thought, and the outcome of this blog has really given me sleepless nights, do I really know how the community consumes information on SDN to help push for change? Does Mark or the rest of the team? and I don't just mean clicks and numbers - I mean how do es or user really consume the massive amount of information presented here?
Thanks for the additional information about the evolution process. I think your entire team is doing a fantastic job in managing this community, keep up the good work.
~ You do understand the impossibility of your statement, don't you?
It is sad to see such hostility for comments critical of a post. It is a 'flame' by 'flamers' 'militia', 'self-styled police' and what not. Really, what was in those comments which were unflattering to this blog that warrants such attack?
If you are blogging your opinion on a forum, the least you could do is be open to comments, critical or otherwise.
I here quote from a comment at another blog (on 'www.greatbong.net') talking of different blog types. One is free to understand what category this (and linked) blog fall in.
--------quote starts---------
* The chick-let blogs which had a tremendous fan following- a bit.....
*The look-at-me kind of blogs which tried to gain petty attention by fighting with and criticizing other blogs- extremely tunnel visioned and narrow minded.
*The shrewd blogs- The ones which used to have billions of hyperlinks and lots of short bullshit posts. By making the reader read all the links, these bloggers tried to create an artifical body of work which kinda conned the reader when he retrospected about those links …that as if….those were not the views of the person who wrote the linked featured, but of the blogger himself (this was accomplished by 2 cents - read 2 sentences like ‘ quite’, ‘very well said’ and ‘beautifully put’ etc etc.). These kind of blogs generally had several axes to grind and most importantly tried to use their blogs to promote themselves...
*The smokescreen blogs- the ones which shot their views ensconsed behind the safety of ‘no comments’. Any attempt to thereby contradict their views were stifled and thus saved these thin-skinned persons from severe embarrasment.
and then some more.....
---ends----
The self-appointed blog police is encouraged by SDN ('Why don't they let me blog?' section), and, is evident in any number of earlier blogs (criticised more strongly for content being very 'basic', or, images being cut-pasted without acknowledgement, and so on). There was never any mention that the critical comments were out of place.
It is sad to see people taking offense of something which was not there.
To be honest, I think the comments, defending the blog (or rather attacking the commenters) are more about who the person (blogger)is, rather than the content (blog) itself. Which, if true, is indeed sad.
I hope it to not be so.
regards,
We consume information each day that we don't bother to digest, it should be no different here.
Amazing thing was Oracle has NOTHING comparable to ST05 which is a amazing way to debug SQLs esp that hit un-buffered transparent tables. I was already accustomed to TKPROF and Oracle trace and had developed AWK scripts to filter out the mass of trace records generated. TKPROF does not see BIND variables. APPS ahas NOTHING comparable to ST05.
This led me to conclude that SAP know Oracle better than Oracle!
I may be out of touch for a few months but situation may not have changed.
D2K compares very poorly with ABAP & SMARTFORMS etc. User-exits are by PLLs. There is no STMS for change management. APPS is 2-tier architecture with a thin frontend deployment. Remote printing is a pain. You need to know X-Windows inside out to be able to get bit-map printing. No version control.
Oracle APPS works no doubt! BUT SAP is years ahead in technology and everything works like a dream!
SAP gives users CCMS and so many things free that most users SAP is a complete product with no need for 3rd party add-ons.
Only thing is Oracle seems to have stronger sales force. People buy SAP and SAP is not too good at selling!
Having worked in BOTH I can say with full confidence that SAP is the safest bet!