ABAP Vs. BI Vs Business objects = ?????????

[Former Member]

Guys,

My question is more career related so this might not be the best section to post it. However, not being able to find a suitable to post this under I am posting it here because a lot many people read the 'ABAP General forum' !:)..

I have close to 8 years of experience in SAP ABAP. I got SAP BI training last year and attended a training session on Business Objects by SAP recently. I know SAP is promoting BO big time and a major portion of BI (Bex Analyzer, other front end tools) will be replaced by Crystal reports, Excelcius etc.

One would understand when I say that I cannot focus(cannot devote equal time)on ABAP, BI and BO at the same time. So which tool(s) should I concentrate on more going forward in order to shape my career in SAP? I am more confused with Business objects because some of its tools (like Crystal reports) are so 'basic' when compared to SAP. Even though they are very easy to use, it seems that people are going for the training just because SAP decided to acquire another company to increase its customer base and generate more revenue in licences!. Is it really worth it to continue to focus on business objects, when ABAP is still doing just fine ? The salaries for ABAP consultants are still higher compared to BO developers. Getting exposure to BI-IP or BPC would be a better bet, I think.

Please advise on my dilemma. I went for the BW training few months back and already half of it is outdated. Not sure which combination of skills from the above can guarantee better salary and would also be in demand for a couple of years.

Thanks in advance..

Raj

[Former Member]

Marking un- answered..

Edited by: hiFlier on Mar 17, 2009 3:02 PM

[Former Member]

I posted in the ABAP General forum initially and then got to know about the Coffee Corner. My earlier posts in this thread were in that forum and addressed to Kartik but the moderators copied the full post over here causing the confusion :)...

Anyways, back to the topic. I am few days into the SAP-BO training and it appears rather weird and full of little bugs too. If SAP concentrated on BW a little more I think it could have easily achieved what Crystal reports and Voyager are doing. I don't know what Excelcius and other tools have in store though.

ABAP + BI + BO sounds good... But is it 'really' good from a demand perspective ? What are the chances of a job requirement with these 3 skills being asked together ? Isn't there a risk of getting into a 'Jack of all trades, master of none' situation ? Confusion is also there because the skill set of consultants gets more varied. Which will be preferred - person with say 10 years of SAP/BI experience who recently got trained in BO or person with 10 years of Business Objects exp who can also manage to work with Queries/BEx etc ???? I ask this because even the trainers from SAP were basically from a BO background !!

Should we rather leave BO to the experts who have been doing it for a long time and concentrate on the SAP side of things or take the plunge i.e. go through all the SAP-BO integration documentation(got a load of it) even when most of it is pre-release and subject to change in future..don't even know how much it would be in demand as well !!

I am not talking to myself yet but Business objects might make me do that as well (by driving me crazy :). I would like to keep this post unanswered for now but its already been marked 'answered' !!!

[matt]

>

> I posted in the ABAP General forum initially and then got to know about the Coffee Corner. My earlier posts in this thread were in that forum and addressed to Kartik but the moderators copied the full post over here causing the confusion :)... 

We like to keep you on your toes... I'm so tempted to mark your post as "answered",... but I'll restrain myself.

For myself, as an ABAP and BI person, I chose not to get involved in all that messy reporting stuff - Bex or BO. I stick to modelling and extractions etc. Back-end stuff. Though I do the interfacing and web layouts in BPS, so it's not all backend.

Anyway, I think that a BI person who can program well, adds substantial value to any project. Many BI people can program to an extent, but would not consider themselves experts. And this leads to less than optimal coding - in terms of performance, but also in terms of maintainability, where massive costs can lurk.

So, I suggest that you leave BI and ABAP as a skillset alone, so that I can corner the market. You go and do BO and all that.

matt

[Former Member]

aha.. so u are one among the thread-movers..:).. nice to get a response...

It was towards the end of the Voyager training that the instructor tells the batch that it is mostly the end-users or power users which will use Voyager. And we were like - 'O yeah, why are we here then..?? whats in it for us developers ?"... heehee... U see I have the option of completely ignoring BO and concentrating on the BI-ABAP part gaining my expertise over there.. BI and ABAP appears to be a niche market (nice payscales ).. SAP-BO doesn't seem to be a safe bet at least at the moment.. Unless some soothsayer predicts a crazy demand for SAP-BO consultants(much like IP or BPC), I do not see the point of wasting ones time and energy on BO's...Wot say ?

Most of the BI front end tools like WAD, BEx Analyzer etc would no longer be supported by SAP in a few years. So many clients will be 'forced' to move over to SAP-BO. Can this be reason enough to gain knowledge of the new tool(s) ?

Edited by: hiFlier on Mar 17, 2009 5:44 PM

[Former Member]

Did experience and training also teach you how to cross-post and not follow-up on your questions?

Or are you a natural at it?

[Former Member]

I didn't cross post. My closing comments in ABAP forum to Karthik were moved to this forum as well !!

If you have any constructive arguments in favour of/ against BO as an additional career option, then you are most welcome to post in this thread.

[Former Member]

I'm Sorry to bug your discussion in between.

Please continue. (Discussion not Cross-posting)

Cheers

[Former Member]

@ Amit: The reason I did not respond to the post you quoted above was because it didn't solve my problem. There is no add new line icon in transaction FCHR in the first place. I decided to go ahead with Call transaction for my requirement because the program was very old and the developer might not have known about this method of upload at that time. I missed to respond (there is no purpose in replying saying 'not working' anyway) because I was waiting for more responses but then got busy with my work. Rest assured, I don't believe anyone would get free advice from the forum and not award points, isn't it ??

@All : I am kind of tempted to ignore SAP-BO for the time being, There is a lot of smoke around how much SAP-BO implementations are going on or in the pipeline. Many BO-Only implementations can be seen at SAP.com 'Client success stories' section though...

Cheers..

[Former Member]

@ Amit: Just noticed that I had posted the FCHR issue twice in the same forum (ABAP General). Blame it on my internet connection <duh>.. That was accidental.. I didn't even notice that there were two posts from me on the same topic in the same forum ( which is not crossposting).. .. cheers

[matt]

First post 12:03, second 12:07 Anyway, duplicate has gone now. I deleted it.

I'm inclined to write this one off to "network issues". I've occasionally made duplicate posts by hitting post message too many times, especially when SCN is running slowly. If there's an hour between, or their in different forums, then that's a different story.

matt

[Former Member]

>

> First post 12:03, second 12:07  Anyway, duplicate has gone now.  I deleted it.
> I'm inclined to write this one off to "network issues".  I've occasionally made duplicate posts by hitting post message too many times, especially when SCN is running slowly.  If there's an hour between, or their in different forums, then that's a different story.

Before deleting the duplicate post if you noticed in both threads that Number of lines in Original Question was different. And you are still believing that was network issue though?!?

[former_member205352]

ABAP is a programming language.

BI is designed using ABAP and is a tool.

BO is mainly used for reporting.

Now on what basis do you compare these ?

ABAP(expert with OOPs)BIBO is a great skill though.

[Former Member]

Please close this thread and ask this question in community discussions section, there u can this in coffee corner as that is the place where u would find all experts visting the coffee corner,

coffee corner:

PS. ABAP rocks man, ABAP is here to stay for a long time definately.

кu03B1ятu03B9к

Edited by: kartik tarla on Mar 16, 2009 11:49 PM

[Former Member]

Thanks.. I did not know about that forum. Will post there right away.

U r spot on btw.. 8 years into ABAP and it is still in demand..

6 months into BI &finding it hard to keep up with it!:)

[Former Member]

Do not be content with ABAP only though... 1 or 2 Netweaver skills would definitely help in the long run..

Edited by: hiFlier on Mar 16, 2009 7:34 PM

[Former Member]

just, i am writing the same that, net weaver + adobe........but, already u posted!! !:-)

thanq

[Former Member]

Ahem, are you talking to yourself?

T00th