Solved: BI career queries

Former Member · ‎2012 Jun 07

Hey there!

I guess I'll just jump straight into it.

1) What is the difference between BusinessObjects BI and Netweaver Business Warehouse Business Intelligence (BW 7.3 & BI 4.0)? Which of the two has better growth prospects?

2) What would be an ideal start to a career track in BI? (I'm currently in my final year of undergrad with CS as my major)

I have serious apprehensions about the second question, primarily because every article I read tells me that its best if I don't jump straight into SAP immediately after graduation (or pre). But does BI require domain knowledge, or can it be applied to whichever field calls for it? Furthermore, is it advisable to jump straight into BI, or is there a more efficient and elegant way to go about this?

Thanks in advance for any inputs.

Cheers!

Former Member · ‎2012 Jun 11

Dev,

I've written several blogs which may help you. Start with Advice for Students Interested in a Career in SAP. You might also enjoy reading stories from other folks recounting how they got from undergrad to SAP. (How did you get your start in SAP?, Storytime! How did you get your start in SAP?)

It would help if we knew just a bit more about your current skillset/interests. The most successful transition from undergraduate into SAP is programming (ABAP/java) or System Administration (Basis). BI is another option, but you should have several classes that specifically address data warehousing as an undergraduate to make that viable.

If you have experience as an undergrad doing system administration or database administration (perhaps as part of a work study job), that would send you down a NetWeaver System Administrator (a.k.a. Basis) path. If you have classes in programming (and that's what you enjoy doing) then that would send you down a programming track. SAP utilizes a proprietary programming language called ABAP, but it also uses JAVA for a significant subset of it's functionality. Many recruiters will recruit ABAP programmers straight out of undergrad and provide training in ABAP provided the undergraduate curriculum has a strong programming core.

The following blogs might help with the Programming/Basis/BI decision

A blog series for folks trying to learn SAP when they don't have an SAP job already

There are a few blogs by other authors which I also think will be very helpful for you

Advice for Recent College Graduates (aka "Freshers")

It is usually advisable for a student to get their first job and gain some domain experience prior to attempting SAP Functional. I would argue the same is true for SAP Basis. Skills picked up as an undergrad in programming seem to be pretty much directly transferable to the job market once you pick up ABAP specific programming differences. BI (in my opinion) can go either way. There are multiple subspecialties involved in BI. BI can mean designing queries. That's more akin to programming. As long as you learn the tool and can translate requirements to queries, you'll be ok. There's also data warehousing, which is the back end. Designing the infocubes and such can be aided by having some domain experience first (especially programming or anything that gets you into the nitty gritty of the data). Undergraduate courses that lay out the theory and foundation for datawarehousing would be even more helpful as that would make your ability to design infocubes even stronger. There are functional folks that specialize in BI after they've had extensive domain and SAP functional experience since they're best able to help with the infocube design. There are ABAP programmers that later in life specialize in BI because they spend their time writing extraction routines.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

--Tom

Former Member · ‎2012 Jun 11

Dev,

I've written several blogs which may help you. Start with Advice for Students Interested in a Career in SAP. You might also enjoy reading stories from other folks recounting how they got from undergrad to SAP. (How did you get your start in SAP?, Storytime! How did you get your start in SAP?)

It would help if we knew just a bit more about your current skillset/interests. The most successful transition from undergraduate into SAP is programming (ABAP/java) or System Administration (Basis). BI is another option, but you should have several classes that specifically address data warehousing as an undergraduate to make that viable.

If you have experience as an undergrad doing system administration or database administration (perhaps as part of a work study job), that would send you down a NetWeaver System Administrator (a.k.a. Basis) path. If you have classes in programming (and that's what you enjoy doing) then that would send you down a programming track. SAP utilizes a proprietary programming language called ABAP, but it also uses JAVA for a significant subset of it's functionality. Many recruiters will recruit ABAP programmers straight out of undergrad and provide training in ABAP provided the undergraduate curriculum has a strong programming core.

The following blogs might help with the Programming/Basis/BI decision

A blog series for folks trying to learn SAP when they don't have an SAP job already

There are a few blogs by other authors which I also think will be very helpful for you

Advice for Recent College Graduates (aka "Freshers")

It is usually advisable for a student to get their first job and gain some domain experience prior to attempting SAP Functional. I would argue the same is true for SAP Basis. Skills picked up as an undergrad in programming seem to be pretty much directly transferable to the job market once you pick up ABAP specific programming differences. BI (in my opinion) can go either way. There are multiple subspecialties involved in BI. BI can mean designing queries. That's more akin to programming. As long as you learn the tool and can translate requirements to queries, you'll be ok. There's also data warehousing, which is the back end. Designing the infocubes and such can be aided by having some domain experience first (especially programming or anything that gets you into the nitty gritty of the data). Undergraduate courses that lay out the theory and foundation for datawarehousing would be even more helpful as that would make your ability to design infocubes even stronger. There are functional folks that specialize in BI after they've had extensive domain and SAP functional experience since they're best able to help with the infocube design. There are ABAP programmers that later in life specialize in BI because they spend their time writing extraction routines.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

--Tom