Review of ALE, EDI, & IDoc Technologies for SAP, 2nd Edition (Prima Tech's SAP Book Series) (Hardcover)

I've read both the Arvind Nagpal and Rajeev Kasturi books, and I conclude that the Nagpal book is much better for me, a person who has been doing SAP EDI for several years.

I do not know either of these authors.I do not have anything to do with the publishers.I bet this is more than many ofthe reviewers here can say!

I know that sheer bulk is not what we arebuying here, but let's do some numbers to examine one aspect of thecomparison. The Kasturi book starts with 388 pages.Well over 100 pages inthe back are tables out of SAP that we can print any time we want (or savea tree and just pull up a screen).Since I've worked with SAP EDI for afew years, I didn't expect a lot of things to be new to me in the first 3or 4 chapters, but man, there was nothing even moderatly interesting to mein the early part of the book.That left about 150 pages in the middlethat, I'll admit, I only skimmed.But the per-page cost of those fewpossibly valuable pages is quite high!There was a strong ALE / exampleflavor to the book.As if someone wrote about a few of their favoriteimplementations.

Now, the Nagpal book starts with quite a few more pages(786).There is NOT a huge section of this book dedicated to stuff I couldprint out of or look up in SAP.Yes, some of this stuff is 'light' too. And again, I'll admit to skimming a lot of it that I didn't have a pressingneed to know right now.And yes, there are quite a few print-screens inthe book (but I LIKE print-screens).The bottom line is that I, a personwho's been using SAP-EDI quite a while, found the Nagpal title MOREINTERESTING, INFORMATIVE,and found it had MORE INFORMATION than theKasturi book.

--Dale--

Product Description
Application Link Enabling (ALE) is SAP's proprietary technology that enables data communications between two or more SAP R/3 systems and/or SAP R/3 legacy systems.ALE and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) technologies are the best fit for this type of communication.With ALE, EDI, & IDoc Technologies for SAP, 2nd Edition, you will acquire powerful skills that are valuable to your employers, clients, or management.A natural follow-up to the original version, ALE, EDI, & IDoc Technologies for SAP (0761519033), this book covers the technical changes of the 4.6 version of SAP R/3.The topics covered in this book will be instrumental to functional and technical staff who are on new SAP implementations, are adding new EDI messages or interfaces to existing implementations, or who are upgrading from version 3.x to 4.x.It is aimed at experienced SAP professionals who are either new to ALE/EDI/IDoc technology or who need a reference for a specific procedure or task.ItemID: 0761534318

About the Author
Arvind Nagpal is the Director of eBusines Services at Rapidigm. He has implemented ALE and EDI for several Fortune 500 companies. He is also a highly respected instructor for SAP cross-application technologies. His in-depth knowledge has aided many global companies in successfully implementing complex distributed SAP systems.

John Pitlak has been involved with EDI development and implementation for ten years. As a consultant to the EPA he participated in some of the early federal government EDI initiatives. John has served as a SAP R/3 consultant and has assisted numerous Fortune 500 clients in implementing EDI, ALE, and IDoc technologies.

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