In a context where the BI team wants to be autonomous to feed their RapidMarts (i.e. not depend on the SAP ERP team’s availability), how realistic is it for such BODS ressources to ramp up on ABAP and manage their SAP RapidMarts feeds on their own?
Without any exposure to SAP ECC6 other than these RMs extractors, is it realistic to expect them to grow the required skills to navigate through SAP contents and maintain their ABAP extracts? Or even develop brand new extracts?
I see 10 to 20-day training courses for ABAP but this does not tell me clearly how well that fits with the skills you need in order to build or maintain BODS extracts, nor how much hands-on experience (weeks? months?) it takes after the training class to really become comfortable with ABAP.
It is completely reasonable for 1 resource to possess those skills - that is what most of my RM consultants do day-in day out. I will say that most of my experience is by way of performing these activities over the course of 8-10 years so I would say experience is important.
I will note a few thoughts that will impact your team no matter how autonomous.
Functional experts - you will always need the help of a functional expert to define and validate useful content - build these connections within your organization as they will be key allies
Basis, Basis, Basis - you will always need to interface with the basis team, i.e. setting up initial content, users, authorizations, transports and help with performance related issues
Scope of changes - Keep in mind, any change to a reporting solution can encompass many components ABAP, DB, ETL, Report or Dashboard modification. All good if all of these resources are under the purview of the DW umbrella - however some may not - so you will need to interface accordingly.
In terms of resources
If you go the RM path, I suggest you look for Data Warehousing resources who understand the Kimball design approach and development methodology - as that was certainly a cornerstone in the development of the RMs. Also, make sure they have a strong grasp on the BOBJ stack as well as SQL (SQL should be a no-brainer but you would be surprised)
If you go the BI/BW path, same as 4, but also make sure they have solid BI experience. From my experience it is harder to find a true DW developer with BI as most have sole tool focus (by true I mean understands Kimball Methodology, ROLAP, Aggregation strategy, dimensionality, etc )
So, despite the ability of BODS to generate the ABAP program for you (as show here), after you have selected the tables/columns you want, joins, etc., you still need some fair share of ABAP skills?
Could you elaborate on this, i.e.:
In which type of scenarios would BODS ABAP program generation not suffice?
How often do you meet such scenarios/what percentage of extracts should I expect to be “BODS generated” vs. manually build or customized, at the end of the day?
I can only think of 3 at the moment, 1)in the case where you may have to leverage existing ABAP programs or function modules i.e. Specialized business logic 2) performance tuning in rare situations where you can’t get the ABAP connectors to generate specific code 3) if you use extractors - they are customized via ABAP program exits
Less than 1% if you use the ABAP connector as the code generation is reliable and meets most all situations. Up to 50%, or more if you use extractors and require customization or creation.
I’d say ABAP is a nice to have if you plan on just using the ABAP connector, If you are going to use extractors an ABAP/DW resource would be necessary if you plan on customization
(BOB member since 2012-03-08)
(BOB member since 2010-11-09)
(BOB member since 2010-11-09)