There is a german saying that a man has to do three things. Build a house, get a child, plant a tree. These days I've come near this. I've bought a house (and moved into it), I cut a tree (and will cut some more to get space to plant a new one, my wife loves magnolias), and my second child will arrive late july. But I wonder what this proverb would be translated into the modern IT world: Setup a server, develop an application, write a book?
Well, I haven't really set up a server (if you don't count the SAP Sneak preview editions) but I wrote quite a lot of applications (and when I'm at a customer and they are starting my programs I still wonder why they don't dump each time) and I've spent the time and wrote a book. Yes, another one of those books that came out of SDN blogs. You can find it here.
Up to now this book is only available in German but maybe there are enough readers who buy this book so that they decide to publish it in English. If you're interested in it you could let SAP press know it so they have more reason to do it.
Anyway what's the book about? Even if you don't speak German it should come to no surprise that this book is about ABAP programming in the BI (or BW). While it cannot explain every single exit I've tried to explain all the exits and BAdIs that are used most frequently. I've tried to put the focus not at the interface but at the 'whole picture', i.e. I explain when to use the exit and (maybe even more important) when not to use the exit. I also tried to provide some patterns and lots of examples to show you typical and original uses of ABAP in the BI.
If you start with NetWeaver 2004s you might be happy to find a complete description of the new exits in the transformation and a short description of the DTP and why it helps developers.
If you have lots of Excel hierarchies you find an extended example of how to translate Excel hierarchies into BW sorted hierarchies. All in all it's 120 pages full of my whole experience of BW consulting that shall help you get the optimum out of your BI.
Anyway I promised a contest in the header. Now that I have some more time to look at SDN again I found out that there are very few BI blogs compared to XI, Java, CAF, BPX, PHP, etc. It seems to me that BI consultants have so much work to do that they don't have the time to do blogs (me included).
So I'll offer a copy of my book (in German - I will also send you an English copy when it appears if you need it) to the best blog that describes anything you've done with an ABAP in BW. Choose any user exit or BAdI you like and write a blog about what you've done with it. I'll read them all and choose a winner. Maybe I can talk Craig into handing out some extra points or transfer some of my points too.
I'll set the deadline to July 31st so that you all have enough time to write something useful. Let your blog title start with BI ABAP so that I'll find you more easily.
I hope you see more of my blogs soon, I have lots of ideas what to blog about.
