I came in to SCN from the Crystal Developers Network after SAP bought BusinessObjects. I've been working in Crystal Reports since version 4.5, when it was owned by Seagate Info. They spun it off into Crystal Decisions, which was then bought by BusinessObjects @2003-2004-ish. In 2005, I merged 9 Seagate Info (SI) systems, which were used to schedule Crystal reports and deliver them to clients, into a single BusinessObjects XI_r2 (BOBJ) cluster. At that time I also re-wrote our code that scheduled reports so that it used C# and the BOBJ .NET SDK plus added modules to our web app to provide user management in BOBJ.
When I started consulting in 2011, my "Dell needs to learn Java" project was a re-write of a utility I'd written in C# that pulls a bunch of info out of the CMS and spits it out to .csv files. That project has grown considerably and is now used for our clients by a number of my co-workers. Since then I've done beta testing for SAP when there are changes to the BOBJ SDKs because I have a wealth of code in both C# and Java that uses the SDKs.
In the SAP Community, I'm primarily known for answering questions about SAP Crystal Reports and its .NET SDK. I've written one blog about using Commands in Crystal (here) mainly because I got tired of typing all the information every time there was a question. Yes, the blog was written in 2015, but all of the information is still good in newer versions of Crystal.
A while back I became a moderator so that I can help with re-tagging questions about Crystal (needs to be done frequently) and last fall I was asked to become an SAP Champion, advocating for the SAP Community. I'm really excited to take on that role!
-Dell
Hello Neighbors & my extended SAP family!!
I live and work in Malvern, Pennsylvania. I have been in the SAP domain for about 10 years, initially worked as a Sales & Distribution consultant and now working with a EdTech company helping them scale and revolutionize their SAP financial system. I am Principal Business Analyst in my current role.
I have recently started participating in SAP community channels - Questions, Blogs and Coffee Corner. I write blogs for SAP communities and SAP Press. I am also amid writing a book for SAP Press. While my book and questions/answers are inclined towards connecting with fellow SAP pros on the technical front, my blogs are personal insights (sharing stories and lessons learnt).
I would love to make connections with people from whom I can learn or pass on my learnings by bonding with them as collogue, friend or a mentor. 🙂
My journey is like @craigcmehil's and started around the same time way back at the birth of SDN - the SAP Developer Network. I had to look it up, but it was October 2003 when I answered my first question in SDN and it was in the ABAP forum:
Public PDF file | SAP Community
Converting OTF to PDF. By the way, OTF is the internal format of SAPScript. I wonder how many people remember OTF, much less SAPScript? I was reading the ABAP forums every day just to keep up on what people were asking and answering. There is so much to learn just by reading other people's problems. I started answering questions heavily, though, because we had a new infant at home which meant lots of late-night wake up calls. I'd have problems going back to sleep so I would spend hours on the ABAP Forums in the middle of the night.
About this time, a hot new technology was emerging called BSP (Business Server Pages). It lets you use ABAP to create web sites with server-side scripting. The SAP Development Manager for BSP, Brian McKellar, was super active on SDN and using it to help people get started using BSP. Through a few back-channel conversations with him, he convinced me to take some of what I was sharing in the forums via answers and turn them into Blog Posts. I wasn't an SAP employee but just an everyday developer at an SAP customer. So, I wrote about whatever our development team was working on or having problems with at the time. My first blog post was in June of 2004 and although not all the code and formatting parts have survived all the platform changes over the years; most of the content is still out there and readable.
BSP – a Developer’s Journal: Part I Introduction | SAP Blogs
The community was a little bit smaller in those early days. I'll leave you with two examples in pictures. Here was the first in person introduction I had to SDN at TechEd San Diego 2004. The entire presence was a table in the birds of a feather area with a small sign that read "SAP Developer Network"
The presence did get significantly larger the next year at TechEd Boston 2005. There was a stand, with multiple signs and it was staffed by non-other than @craigcmehil. But that's a story for another day.
'04 Summer or so. Just "finishing" an ABAP course where the teacher had too much work solving work issues to really teach us anything, so the "classes" were boring to the bone.
I decided to look for real troubles and learn from real solutions, and not silly exercises meant for newbies (I was in the development world for ten years or more). Found the SCN and few other sites.
The SCN had the same problems I have with the current Q&A, so I decided to put by brain into another place: SAPFans.
I came again from time to time, and if you check my blog history, the problem is recurrent:
2013: I tried to explain it kindly and took a leave
I came back few months ago, tried to restart the "thank you process" (returning part of the "wisdom" I gained through communities), but I got burned much faster than before. First, I tried to blow some steam in a useful way, having a link to throw at the face of leechers.
But you cannot post links to self-promote (and sadly, that blog post was mine, so to throw it to the face of leechers was -in a way- self-promoting), so I left again.
You must learn from past lessons, and to repeat the same thing when nothing has changed is a sign of foolishness. I want not to look like a foor, so I plan to keep that "nap" until leechers could be haunted away. It's not that easy: the best way should be to use and enforce "bad karma", but SAP must keep its customers, so to shame community members will not be something we will see soon.
I'll keep my butt here and will blog from time to time, keeping my brain away from Q&A. Luckily, there are people with much more patience than I have.
You asked for our story. I posted mine. A sweet and sour one, sadly.
But it's not your fault, and I never blamed the moderators nor the site builders. I have some needs, SAP has other ones, and I'm at your house, so I cannot blame you because the decoration.
BUT if you ask me how I feel it, it's too noisy for my taste, and because that, I decided to keep my butt in your coffee corner when I come here.
It's a great work, seriously, but you have some limitations that makes me feel uncomfortable in some parts of it.
Hi Sravani - you could take some free OpenSAP courses at open.sap.com - the labor market is short on S/4HANA talent, maybe start with those courses?
There are also free learning at learning.sap.com - perhaps low-code no code course?
I can share what seems like the end of my story. I'm writing this from my S-linked account to https://people.sap.com/matthew.billingham
Recently had trouble logging in with a password request. However, the password (for my P account) stored in my keepass vault wasn't accepted. So I requested a password reset. That was sent to my old email address ....@yireh.ch
Thing is, last year, I requested that email address be replaced with my gmail.com address - as yireh.ch was soon to expire as a domain. I received notification this had been done. I even have that email!
Only now, when I seek help from itsm.notification-service@sap.com, they tell me it wasn't done. And my email address (required to reset the password) can't be changed. So no password reset for me!
I argued that, hey, look at my s-account. Clearly linked to that p-account. It's obviously mine. You can see it's mine. Here - look at the JSON download of my account - it shows we're one and the same.
Nope. "Our policy has changed".
I can still access my Universal SAP Id, but it appears my P account is forever inaccessible.
