BOB is Retiring

Hello fellow community members! I bring this announcement to you with trepidation, angst, and sadness. After all of these years, the BOB community will be retired in 2020.

The activity level here has dropped substantially over the past few years. Part of this is likely due to the influx of new competitors to Business Objects such as Tableau and Power BI. Part of this is likely the fact that BOB is based on software that is well over a decade old, and is not exactly mobile friendly. There are any number of reasons, but in the end it’s not the “why” that matters, it’s simply the fact that we’ve had a good run and it seems like an appropriate step at this time.

The site will remain open for posting for the next several months. At the end of March, 2020, the site will become closed to new registrations and posts. Essentially it will become a read-only resource which we will keep online until August, 2020. It seems fitting that since we launched the community in August all these years ago (in 2002! :shock:) that we end it at the same time.

We should all be proud of what we built and maintained over the years. That includes the die-hard posters from the BUSOB-L mailing list, the initial forum testers, your much over-worked moderator team (darn spammers :reallymad: :reallymad:), and every single person who took time out of their day to help someone with a question. BOB would not have become what it is (or was) without any of you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank all of you, for everything.


Bob (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

So sad, I’ve used this site on and off for 15 years. It was a great resource. I still use it actively and think it would be useful going forward, especially with 4.3 coming out. Thanks to everyone for contributing.


bension (BOB member since 2005-09-01)

It’s been a great run. This has been a wonderful community. B:bob:B will be greatly missed.


MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

It has been a long, great run B :mrgreen: B

Thanks to the team/moderators and members.
:wave:


Andreas :de: (BOB member since 2002-06-20)

Very sad news. Thanks for hosting us Dave and team.

Will an offline backup be taken in case the product takes off again now SAP are finally throwing a bit of dev resource at it?

Hello Dave,

Remembering the time when I was posting Excel documents with some VBA inside to help BI admins… Funny time !

I am thinking it is sad to let this resource going offline even if there is less active threads. I am still going on BOB when googling for some specific BOBJ issue !

If you don’t want to maintain BOB, is there is option to let someone else keep this forum running ? I am OK to invest time and money to keep it online, let me know if we can do something.

Thanks for your feedback !

Hi old friends

Let’s see this as good news. In 2020 BOBJ will celebrate its 30 years!

Yep, old friends since this was a REAL community. I remembered those days where the first thing I was doing in the morning was going to BOB …
Yep old friends guess what I met Chris Sieverts few weeks ago since he is also living in Boston now …

@michael please do not post in this thread
:reallymad:

CU

I will be sorry to see BOB go. I have learned a lot, posted a little. I know an MS-Access forum that has a lot of advertising unless you pay a bit (three levels of support for the web site).


kevlray :us: (BOB member since 2010-06-23)

Very sad to hear this news. BOB has had my six for years and it will be a challenge to go forward without it.

Hey Sebastien, Chris & I worked together at AT&T Wireless way back in the early 2000’s, not even sure what version of BOBJ that was.


charlie :us: (BOB member since 2002-08-20)

Hey Chaz you meant cingular :mrgreen:

Small world BOB is everywhere even within Tableau, Qlik … community you can always find an old B :mrgreen: Ber

:lol: That was a fun thread, even if no one could resist the temptation.


MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

Sad times now…does anyone remember the kitchen spammer?


Nick Daniels :uk: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

I’ve been out of BI since 2011 and I still check in from time to time to see if there is a new thing or an old question I can still answer.
That will be a hard habit to break.

Heck, I’m not even in IT any more. I restore houses now.


kbrazell :us: (BOB member since 2003-08-19)

That sounds like a fun job. I’m a little jealous.


MichaelWelter :vatican_city: (BOB member since 2002-08-08)

Yes, I do. :slight_smile:


Marek Chladny :slovakia: (BOB member since 2003-11-27)

Now I`m depressed…


ABILtd :uk: (BOB member since 2006-02-08)

Wanna buy a kitchen?


Nick Daniels :uk: (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

:frowning:


joepeters :us: (BOB member since 2002-08-29)

Before deciding on a career in IT I used to design kitchens!


ABILtd :uk: (BOB member since 2006-02-08)

I had fun reporting those over my morning coffees.