Personal Insights
Deep Thoughts – Too Much SAP Information on the Net
There are so many different options to learn about all things SAP. Yes, I do mean pretty much all of SAP. I sometimes think what a wonderful thing it is to have information at our fingertips. I sometimes think what a horrible idea to have information at our fingertips.
Crazy right? I came from when SDN was just starting up. There wasn’t a lot of information. There was really about 500 or more percent less available on-line. We were lucky to have a good instructor when we went to SAP training. To bring a consultant to help with “anything” SAP, they just had to spell SAP.
Just enough or could be more information:
As you can see from my last paragraph, we now bring in much better consulting resource. At this point we are working with one firm. It makes things easier. Not only do they know how to spell SAP, they know their jobs. I have to believe that is from all the available training materials.
I could spend probably weeks, months and maybe even a year consuming all the training information. It’s really cool that when I need it, it’s there.
Innovation is driven by a piece of data I consume from somewhere else. It might spark a thought to run with.
Projects get done quicker with the availability of the information. And yes, as I have the time I do go back to my bookmarks to re-read a good piece of information that might help me program.
I can ask a question and it might be answered. I’ll also try find the solution myself, but after many hours of doing that – I ask that question.
I get to learn!!!! Big plus.
Most of it is free. Another huge plus.
University students are encouraged to work on a project and post it in GITHUB. I might be able to use some code snippets. (Of course, everyone is encouraged to add information to GITHUB.)
Less Information:
Some of the information contradicts itself. So who to believe? Well it might be an easy answer as one makes more sense than the other. Or you trust one source better than the other. But how do you really know? For me it’s doing a program or config both ways. Of course that adds time to the project. But it is better than a shoddy job.
There are too many courses, tutorials, blogs. I could never read them all! Although at times I try.
So I have time for training. That does happen once in awhile. Besides thinking about the project(s) that I’m working on or that are coming up. What do I focus on? A blog will save me – The future of SAP application programming according to Teched 2018.
Bad consultants can use the net to look up questions and answers before their interview. Don’t worry, it’s easy to know what they do/do not know once they start working. But what if it’s something you don’t know anything at all about. You could be paying for their training as they search the net and/or trail and error on your system.
Innovation was at it’s finest without all the extra data. You had to spend some time thinking about how you would do something. But now the answer is why reinvent the wheel? Well… Because you might find a different answer that works better for you. When we didn’t have easy access we had to think even more “out of the box”.
Too much marketing. I search and I get the marketing. I search and get sent to firms that want my company information before I can download something. Very frustrating.
Final Thoughts:
All the information out there is really good. It’s awesome that blogs have comments. Comments that used constructively can improve the solution.
So if you are thinking about adding some more information and worried it will be criticized too much. Please add it. If the comments give a better way of doing something – constructive criticism – you learn and so do. I’ll learn from your blog and/or the comments.
Yes, I could get stuck in all the tutorials, training, reading. But that’s OK too. That just means I have different sources to make those brain cells work.
Also asking questions after I try different things is an amazing thing to be able to do. Even if it has be answered before, I get pointed to that answer. (I probably was searching incorrectly to find it)
Free training means I don’t have to have my company shell out the money for every training course. Then to find out 3 days into the course that it wasn’t what I wanted. Or even worse, have no training budget and yet I want to stay on top of things.
I’m in my work office (at home) shouting more information, more information, more training – I love it! Of course I had to stop. My dogs were cheering too – Um.. barking loudly.
Some of my favorite learning Sources and there are tons more:
github.com
open.sap.com
https://developers.sap.com/tutorial-navigator.html
and of course:
https://www.sap.com/community.html
I feel like we all drowning in the white noise of information..... there is no more quality barrier to posting/publishing anymore.
For several years already I've been mentally writing a blog on a similar subject. Good for you for beating me to posting this. 🙂
I'm sure many SCN members are old enough to remember when PC games were purchased on CDs at a physical store. Remember how every box had "system requirements" on it? Like what Windows version you need, what memory, processor, etc.
So few years ago when SAP Personas became free one SAP customer decided to investigate whether at least one of our systems was on the right release level to even attempt a Personas project. I set out to investigate but after hours of browsing "product maps", "administrator guides", SCN blogs, etc. I felt none wiser. Different sources offered slightly different information and, most importantly, none had the same level of clarity as a game CD.
As it happens, in one of the visits to sap.com the annoying "wanna chat?" window came up. OK, why not. Opened a chat and asked a simple (I thought) question: "what is the minimum ECC 6.0 EHP/SPS level required to use SAP Personas?" The SAP side went silent for a while and then came up with an answer that we should install EHP 7 because, you know, it's latest and greatest. This didn't match any of the information I found and wasn't helpful in any way.
In the end, I gave up and just emailed the same question to a fellow Mentor. Of course, within minutes I had a short and complete answer, also pointing out potential challenges in a non-Unicode system (which none of the other resources even mentioned).
It seems that these days it's more than ever "not what you know but who you know". Only for a different reason.
Yes, the source is important. <sigh> All that information at our fingertips, and sometimes it becomes a nightmare. Sometimes it is a wonderful thing too. I go back and fourth depending on the day.