Grey Matter

What happened to blogging more....

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:45:00 +0000

Wow. I was just looking at someone else's blog, when I realized that I haven't posted on this blog for some time. But I had no idea that it has been about a year. Ironically, one of my last posts was about how I wanted to blog more. Well, that didn't happen. So it appears that my professional life as well as my personal life has taken precedence, which I have to say is not a bad thing. Work at SAP has been really busy in 2009, but I am happy with what I have contributed over the year. At the end of 2009, I moved from the EPM Solution Management team to the EPM RIG team, which in my opinion, is the right team for me. I have been creating tools and solutions for BPC NW, and publishing them in How-To guides on SDN. Those of you working with BPC NW, look for a new Backup/Restore tool coming soon, written by yours truly. I really enjoy this type of work, so I'm pretty happy about being on this team. I just got back from a trip to China, where we met with the Shanghai development team. It was a really good trip and the Shanghai developers are awesome guys. I just started on a new topic which will allow me to learn about compiler design, and it appears that I will be helping with the core development on this topic as well. Which means some more of my code will ship with an official SAP product, which is always cool. I also have been told that there is a project later in the year which will allow me to learn yet another language, and leverage the .net framework, so looking forward to that as well. So I'm not going to make another promise of blogging more in 2010, since it appears that I will not have enough time to anyway. Later for now.

So lets do some good....

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:32:00 +0000

Yes, yes. I know, I have not kept up with blogging at least once a week. What can I say, we are all busy. There is a bunch of wrong happenings taking place in the world in the past couple of days and many things I can not yet comprehend. So lets talk about something good for a change. I just wanted to drop a line and plug the FMR(Friday Morning Report) initiative for "Doctors without Borders". Craig Cmehil started this initiative and has already raised enough money to surpass his initial goal, even before doing the 24 hour marathon. But tune in for the event, and help Craig raise even more money for the cause. For those of you who have already donated, thanks for your support, and pass the word along to your friends. Stay tuned for more information about this event, and when it will be rescheduled.

2009 Blogging Resolution

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:12:00 +0000

So I've been lacking in my blog entries as of late, well for the last several months, and I made a new year's resolution to start blogging more( at least one a week ), even if that means the blogs are short, personal, or simply trivial lines of drivel. Well, here it is mid-January, and I this is my first blog entry of the year, so already not doing so good on my resolution. Back when I first created this blog, my intension was to blog about stuff that I would not post on my SDN blog. I would write about things that are interesting to me, but not necessarily interesting to the technical SAP world. I managed to write a couple entries, mostly about my experiences with SAP conferences, ASUG and TechEds. This year, however, I want to expand my topics on this blog. Maybe giving more thoughts on what is going on in the world, including technology news. Some technology related topics I will post on the enterpriseGeeks blog as well. We just launched the enterpriseGeeks site this month, and I'm really excited about being apart of this group. These guys have a lot of insight to offer to the technology world, and I am honored to be included in the group. A few of them are affiliated with the enterprise irregulars group and all of us are SAP Mentors. You can read up on this group here. Happy 2009!

SAP TechEd 2008 - Berlin

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:49:00 +0000

So I am in Berlin this week attending SAP TechEd Berlin 2008. This was my first time traveling to Europe, so there was some adjustment, like having no alarm clock in my hotel room, and never getting any ice in my glass when asking for a coke or sprite. On Monday, we did the Mentor's Hands-On track again, and it went pretty well I think, the turnout was more than I expected since no one signed up on the wiki. On Tuesday was Demo Jam, which was really a repeat of the Las Vegas Demo Jam, but the only one that was new, ended up being the winner, and they did a good job. They did a code-less application builder for the iPhone. The ESME team presented well, and we cheered for them, but unfortunately, they didn't make the top three. Good job and congratulations to them anyway. They should be very proud of what they have accomplished in the past 4 months or so. After that was RIA Hacker night, where Dan McWeeney, from Adobe Systems, presented Adobe's project Genesis, and came baring gifts, free Flex Builder 3 licenses, and books! Thomas Jung, from SAP NetWeaver Product Management, presented what SAP is doing in the RIA space, and showed the Flash Islands technology in Web Dynpro ABAP which is delivered with NetWeaver 7.0 Enhancement Pack 1. The rest of the evening was spent sitting around chatting about technologies, SDN, and doing Jager shots. Craig Cmehil taught Mike Prosceno, from SAP Global Communications, how to code an iPhone application. Mike is responsible for the "Blogger's Corner" at the various SAP events, he and Stacey Fish really do a great job with it. This afternoon, the SAP Mentor's had a meeting with the new head of NetWeaver development at SAP, Herve Couturier. He really seemed to understand where the Mentor's were coming from with their issues and concerns. Tonight, is the Steve Winwood concert, and I have to say I am not really a fan, but its entertainment none the less, and much better than watching German television. Tomorrow evening, I plan to actually explore the city a bit, and take in some of the historical sites, like the Holocaust Memorial, and the Brandenburg Gate which are right down the street from my hotel. When walking to the train station from the hotel each morning, I could just feel the history around me, you can feel it in your feet as you walk on the stone-like streets, and look at the architecture. Really amazing city, I must say.

Mentor Hands-On Sessions at Community Day in Berlin

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:03:00 +0000

So as I said before, we did a mentor hands-on track at the Community Day in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago and it was a complete success. The room was overflowing, and we could not accommodate everyone, which for me is one of the key factors when measuring success. :) It was still undetermined if we would repeat the track in Berlin as well, but I know that a few people showed interest via Twitter. So now I am pleased to announce that we will be doing the mentor hands-on track at Community Day in Berlin, on October 13th, the day before TechEd Berlin. Unfortunately, one of us, Ed Herrmann, will not be able to make it to Berlin due to a major project go-live that week. Good luck Eddie! We'll miss ya. Thomas Jung has graciously accepted the task of taking over Eddie's session, so that the track content can stay intact. If you haven't seen the track content yet, go to the wiki page and check it out(sessions 18-21). Thomas, Dan McWeeney, and myself, are all doing sessions in this track. You may also download the session materials ahead of time from the google code site. If you haven't signed up for Community Day yet, you can add it as a pre-conference session on your TechEd registration at any time. Then make sure to sign up for the mentor hands-on track by adding your name next to the sessions in the space provided on the wiki. This is the only way to guarantee your spot in the sessions. We are really excited about doing the track, and hope to see you at the Berlin Community Day.

SAP TechEd 2008 Wrap-UP

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 18:44:00 +0000

So I just got home late last night from TechEd in Las Vegas. After having some time to reflect, I think this TechEd was pretty good compared to previous events. On Tuesday, I attended a couple sessions and ended up hanging out in the Community Clubhouse a little. I sat in on an Speaker-meets-Mentor roundtable discussion on ABAP, and actually got a chance to meet Horst Keller for the first time. I had know of him for years from his best selling ABAP Objects books, and had hoped to meet the man who had opened my eyes to the world of ABAP. I thanked him for what he has done over the years in ABAP, and mentioned that he is a hero to many, including me. He then exclaimed, "I'm just a documentation writer!!". I said, "I don't care what they call you, you're awesome". He is truly a great, and humble man. Glad that I had a chance to shake his hand.

On Wednesday, Thomas Jung and I did the first COMP277 session. It is always nice to see a huge line waiting outside the door to get into a hands-on session. I understand that we had to turn people away. Basically I was there to simply help people with their exercises, Thomas presented all of the material. Even though I was just helping out, I realized that these sessions do really give tremendous value to the attendees. I overheard one person telling Thomas, that the session was recommended to him from another colleague, and that this session alone was worth the price of the entire TechEd. I was really taken back by that statement. Others told me that they really liked the session and would recommend to others for next year. So I guess we will be doing an updated version of this session again next year as well. :) That night, we all went to the RIA Hacker Night sponsored by Adobe. Pretty good pizza and ice cream, but was a little disappointed that there was no rum, only beer. :( That's alright though, we had a good time anyway. After the presentations, we broke out, and some talked tech, some updated their ABAP sneak preview systems, and some played Rock Band. By the end of the night, I was exhausted and had laid down for a nap while Gregor Wolf was finishing up his NSP update.

On Thursday, Thomas and I did two instances of the COMP277, again both were sold out and had very long stand-by lines. That night, we had to follow tradition, and have a group dinner at an "All-you-can-eat" buffet. I was charged with finding one for all of us to go to, and quickly decided to choose the buffet at the Wynn hotel. It came highly recommended from the concierge desk at the Palazzo, and she mentioned that they have the best seafood, so I was sold. So the eleven of us had a great meal, and a lot of laughs. Some of us had too much to eat, including me. Then we were off to the Black Crows concert, which again, was lacking in rum, but had a good time anyway. Most of us had special seating, which put me about 8-10 rows back from the stage. After the concert we walked up/down the strip for a while and then called it a night, bringing this years TechEd to a close.

So to summarize, the community day sessions were a complete success, the COMP277 sessions were a complete success, managed to meet Horst Keller, hung out with a lot of friends, lost only 20 bucks, and now have some great memories. As for the Berlin TechEd, I am still looking into ways to get myself there, so that we can do the Mentor Hands-On track at Community Day, and I can meet up with online friends from across the pond. We shall see.....

Community Day 2008 Las Vegas

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:21:00 +0000

So yesterday was community day at SAP TechEd Las Vegas. The day started with a little over 300 people finding out that Mark Finnern can play the hell out of a harmonica. He then announced that the "Points for Food" initiative has passed the first milestone of 2,500,000 points, which translates to a 100,000 EUR donation from SAP. Mark Yolton then came up and added some comments and gave us a warm welcome. Each speaker for community day was then given 30 seconds to promote their session. Not sure that I was able to articulate the essence of my session in the amount of time, but oh well.

As for the mentor hands-on track, hosted by Thomas Jung, Dan McWeeney, Ed Herrmann, and myself, I think it was a complete success. We had people waiting outside the door for a chance to get in. I understand that we had to turn people away because we ran out of chairs. I think a lot of the attendees were happy with this track and thought that it added a lot of value to the day. For example in my session, when I was showing new features in ABAP, the attendees seemed to be really excited about such things as: method chaining and code completion in ABAP.

Lastly, I actually got invited to the SAP Global Communications Blogger Dinner which took place at a very nice restaurant in the Palazzo Hotel. I had the spaghetti with lobster and scallops. It was quite good. It was pretty cool to hang with all the enterprise bloggers. That's it for now.

Learning Adobe Flex

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:52:00 +0000

So for those that don't follow me on twitter, I have been learning Adobe Flex 3 for the past couple of months, and I am really having fun with it. My past experience with developing web applications was limited to JSPs in a portal environment using HTMLB, so I'm really liking the look and feel of Flex based applications a lot better. I've been reading and doing exercises from the book, "Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source" and I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to start learning Flex from the ground up. Before reading this book, I really had only limited exposure to Flex. I don't pretend to be a Flex expert, by any sense of the word, but I think I could now contribute intelligently to a discussion on the subject. The main reason for learning Flex now is that I am currently working on a project involving Flex at SAP. I can't really talk about it at the moment, but rest assure, that as soon as I have the go ahead, I will be blogging about it. Till then, I am going to keep moving forward with Flex and learning as much as I can. So if anyone has any good recommendations for books on advanced topics of Flex development, I'm really looking for some direction.

Since learning the basic foundations of Flex, I thought that I would also test out the new Flash Islands functionality delivered in NetWeaver 7.0 Enhancement Pack 1. SAP now provides a way for you to embed Flex based applications into your Web Dynpro ABAP components in NetWeaver. Basically you use a SAP delivered library in your Flex component, and call a method to register the Flex component with Web Dynpro. There are also other methods provided which handle the interaction between the Flex component and the Web Dynpro application, such as firing events back and forth. You then upload your Flex component to the Web Dynpro ABAP component, set the root container as a Flash Islands container, map the SWF, set a few context mappings to the data sources used in the Flex component, and that's pretty much it. Ok, so maybe I'm making it sound too easy, but I was actually really surprised how easy it was to get working.

Lastly, for those of you that are attending TechEd this year, you will get a chance to use the new Flash Islands functionality in the COMP277 - ABAP Development: Update Your Skills to SAP NetWeaver 7.0 hands-on session that Thomas Jung and myself are giving. The first two occurrences of this session are currently sold out, but there is one on Thursday afternoon which is still open.

Its that time again.....

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:49:00 +0000

Yep, its that time again, we are just about a month away from SAP's annual technical conference, SAP TechEd 2008. Once again, this year we return to the Venetian Congress Center. I attended TechEd 2006 which was held at the same venue, and I thought it was a great place to hold the conference, and the rooms were pretty nice as well. This year, most people I know are staying at the new Palazzo hotel which is actually a part of the Venetian complex. I've taken the virtual tour of these rooms, and they look pretty nice as well.

Once again, SDN Community Day will be held the day before TechEd starts, and this year there is something new being offered. I would say that most of the attendees of TechEd, find the hands-on sessions the most valuable part. I would have to agree, as back when I was an SAP customer, this was my biggest selling point to my boss. Now with community day, people have to once again justify the additional $300 registration fee to attend. This may be a bit difficult, if your boss doesn't "get" the whole community thing. During Sapphire this year, a couple of us were sitting around discussing how community day could add more value for the attendees, and adding a hands-on track was mentioned as one of the ideas. There had been a couple long hands-on sessions the previous year, but this took up the entire day, and really took you away from the community day itself. So this year, we are sponsoring an SAP Mentor Hands-On track at community day. Me, and a few of my fellow SAP Mentor colleagues, Thomas Jung, Dan McWeeney, and Ed Herrmann will be doing four separate one hour sessions, each one building on the last. There is limited space for these sessions so sign-up on the wiki.

Later in the week, I am scheduled to help out with a four hour hands-on workshop called "ABAP Development: Update Your Skills to SAP NetWeaver 7.0" with fellow SAP colleague Thomas Jung. We did a similar session with the same name last year, but this years session has a more streamlined approach as well as some new technologies not yet available to SAP customers. We will be giving this session three times that week.

RIA Hacker night, being held on September 10th, should be quite interesting. Sponsors such as Adobe, Redmonk, and Coghead, as well as the SAP Developer Network, will be hosting the event and supplying some really great content. I actually was going to show something at this event that I am currently working on within SAP, but I know that it will not be anywhere near demo-ready by the time the event rolls around. So maybe next year.

Finally, I'm really looking forward to meeting up with old friends and a good time. Hopefully, I can finally meet a couple of SAP Mentors making the trip across the pond to join us in Vegas. Now I can just clear off my desk before TechEd comes, I'll be all set.

Getting Ready for ASUG/Sapphire 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:43:00 +0000

It is that time of year again, time for the ASUG/Sapphire Annual Spring Conference. I've been able to go to this event the past few years, and I have really enjoyed it each year. There is a lot of diverse content, and there is always something for everyone, from the developer, up to the CIOs.

This year will be a little different for me as I am not going as an SAP customer, but as an SAP employee, which means I don't have strict instructions to go to required sessions and report back to my company. Instead, I will be free to explore other sessions that I would not normally go to as an ABAP developer and increase my knowledge scope. This is something that I have strived to accomplish over the past several months, but have come up short in finding the time to do so. I'm looking forward to walking the show floor, and checking out the various pod presentations. I will also be co-presenting a session with Leo as he has mentioned here.

Finally, I am looking forward to meeting up with old friends and maybe making some new ones in the process. It would be really nice to meet some more of my SAP colleagues face to face as well. Working from home 80% of the time does not allow for much office networking, so I plan to take advantage of the fact that I will be socializing with real people, and not virtually.

See you all in Orlando.

Economic Stimulus?

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:59:00 +0000

Maybe I'm one of the few, but giving me "free" money would hardly make me want to spend it as soon as I get it. It is my understanding that there are a lot of people out there that wait all year to get their hands on their income tax refund, only to go out and blow it all in one day. I would assume these same people are the target audience of the US government when announcing the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. But what will these people spend the money on? One month's rent? One month's mortgage payment? Make a payment on a credit card? A month's worth of gas?(ok so I'm exaggerating) Or will they really go out and spend it on the newest LCD HDTV? I for one, will most likely put it in my account and it will sit there earning interest(very little). Twelve hundred is hardly enough to send me on a spending spree, yes I'm cheap like that. I appreciate that Mr. Bush has acknowledged that there is a real problem with the economy in the US, but I have my doubts as to how much help the stimulus checks will provide. I believe that there are other issues on the table which are dragging this economy down. I am not a politician, nor do I care to be one, but we pay these politicians to do a job, are they doing it?

A Quick Update.......

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Tomorrow marks the end of development for the project I'm working on at SAP. We were charged with the task of putting the SAP BPC product on NetWeaver(ABAP). I actually finished my last piece this afternoon, so I'm done a little early. It has been a long road since joining the team back in October, and the challenges we've faced and overcome were many. I got all of my assignments done on time, and in good quality, so that is something to feel good about. The next few weeks will be filled with bug fixes and testing. I'm sure that new requirements will come into play as well, but hopefully not too many. I've had the opportunity to learn a lot these past months, and to use a lot of techniques that I had not used before in prior releases, so it has been a lot of fun as well.

Over the past five months, I regretfully haven't had the opportunity to contribute to SDN all that much, but I plan to be more active in the forums and also post more technical blogs and/or articles in the near future. To be honest, I have been checking the ABAP forum on a semi-regular basis, but the questions within are just not challenging anymore, its really the same old stuff, over and over again. So really, it is not 100% lack of time which is keeping me from contributing, but the questions being asked is partially the reason as well.

Eight things you probably didn’t know about me

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:30:00 +0000

Well it appears that I have been tagged by Craig Cmehil for this blog entry, and believe it or not I just found it now, only 18 days past due. I'm probably missing something with these "tags" and what not, as I have not yet discovered all of the ins and outs of blogging. Never-the-less, it is about 11:30pm on a Friday night, wife is in bed, so now is as good a time as any to share eight things that you probably didn't know about me. Here goes.

1) I am a junior. That's right, my father's name is Richard as well. I understand that I was very close to being named "Eric". Actually that doesn't sound too bad. I try not to use the "Jr" in my professional life and only use it for official documents. I have just completed a 2 1/2 month struggle with getting "jr" removed from my email address at work.

2) I am the biggest Seinfeld fan around. I own all 9 seasons on DVD(which I don't watch, just have, to say "I have them"). Re-runs are on every weekday at 5:00pm, so I usually watch it then. For those of you who haven't seen this show, it is a show that you either get, or you don't, which directly translates to you either love it, or you hate it.

3) I am a huge rock music fan. I can still remember listening to my Dad's record collection every Saturday while rocking on the rocking chair for hours. I can still remember the feeling that I got when I opened a Christmas present, and it was a cassette tape(remember those?) of the album "Songs from the Big Chair" by "Tears For Fears". After a couple years I moved into the "Rap thing", starting out with the Beastie Boys, and some of the other gangster rap as well. Then I can remember being introduced to Metallica, and the album "...And Justice For All". That was it for me, I basically pitched the rap, and moved into rock, which at about this time, the grunge thing was starting. Since then music has been a very important part of my life, and I have been listening, and collecting ever since. Also, I buy all my CDs, I do not download music from iTunes. I like having the CD and looking at the insert.

4) I was hit in the head with a baseball when I was around 10 or so, and I have a slight bump on my forehead which is still visible today. I'm told that it is a calcium deposit which will never go away. And no, I have no idea if it hurt or not, I was knocked out for a couple seconds and don't remember much from that day.

5) I was actually employed by two companies at the same time earning a paycheck at both for a week in 2006. So I got an opportunity that year to work for a consulting firm which I accepted. I left my former company, went on vacation to Disney World, and starting with the new company when I got back from vacation. Pretty much as soon as I sat down at the client site, I knew that I had made a huge mistake. The project was totally FUBAR, and the project management was a joke. I knew that I didn't want to have anything do to with it. So I called up my former company and said, "so I hear your looking for a developer", the next week I was back at the old company. They had not even terminated me in the system yet, so instead of doing all that, we just applied my vacation time to that week as if I never left, so I got a check from them and from the consulting company for that week. I bought a HDTV with the extra funds.

6) I took four years of German in high school and can't speak/write a word of it today. I did very well in the class for those four years, but never really applied myself enough to really take hold of the language. Basically I'm kicking myself these days, now working for a German company. It would have come in really handy. So the lesson here is, don't ever tell your kids, "Oh don't worry about that, you'll never use that in life".

7) I started in the world of computing about 10 1/2 years ago as a computer operator. I worked with the AS/400. Basically, my job was to print out reports and forms at certain times of the day and distribute them to the appropriate users. Yes, this job was indeed boring, but it got me "a foot in the door" toward programming, which started 2 years later. I attended an RPG/IV class at a local institute for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and then went to work afterwards and the company paid for everything, which was nice. I did about 2 years with RPG, and then moved into ABAP and SAP and the rest is history.

8) My favorite vacation spot is Disney World. For the past 3 years, my family and I, have ventured south for a annual dose of the Disney magic. The past two years, we did the land and sea vacation, which we did 3 days in the parks, and 4 on the Disney Wonder cruise ship. This year we will be doing 7 days in the parks, and will take some time to relax this year as well. You know, sometimes vacations aren't really vacations for the parents. Regardless if you have kids or not, I highly recommend doing a Disney vacation. They really have there stuff together, and they make everything so easy.

This was a fun blog to write, it gave me a chance to sit back and think about things, and reflect. Very nice, it brought a smile to my face. Sorry to say, it appears that all of the active bloggers that I know have already been tagged for this, so no tags from me.

The First Two Months with SAP

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 01:49:00 +0000

This next week will wrap up my first two months of employment with SAP and I have to say that things are really going great. I am really happy, much more so than when working for my former employer. Not only in my work life, but in my family life as well. I am having a better relationship with my kids, and my wife seems to be happier not having to call me and ask when I will be home for dinner. Working from home definitely has its advantages in that way. I was also able to take 15 minutes or so and go to my son's pre-school to see his Halloween parade. Basically, it was a bunch of kids walking around in a circle with their costumes on. Not really a big deal, but I felt good that I was able to do it, and I think my son may have appreciated it as well. I'm also getting to know more about what my daughter is in to, although I don't really like discussing "boys". It's nice to talk to her about what's going on in school and stuff. We really never had time to do this in the past, or never made the time for some reason. I am seeing that there is quite a difference between 12 year olds now, and when I was 12.

I have been out to Palo Alto to meet with the rest of my team twice so far(going back next week), and I really like going out there. The area is very nice, and it is not so bad to get around, except if you are commuting when the kids are going to school. Last week when I was out, it really hit home, that the people that I'm working with are really top-notch. These guys are unbelievable when it comes to product knowledge. I was blown away. Hopefully one day I will be as knowledgeable as they are in this regard. All of the people that I have met have been really nice. My team even waited for me to arrive last week before going to lunch. How nice is that. If my team is the norm within SAP, then SAP is truly a great company. They have made me feel right at home and the feeling is good, especially for someone that came from a very small company and was use to the "family" working environment.

My team had a trip to China a couple weeks ago, and I am still kicking myself in the butt for not going along. I had some loose ends to tie up at home before venturing off to the other side of the world. I understand that it was quite an experience, and they even took a tour of the "Great Wall" over the weekend. Sounds like it was a blast, and I will be joining them next time for sure.

Speaking of my former company, it appears that things may not be getting better, as I understand that the leader of the IT team there has since left the company for another position with a very large well-known SAP customer. He had been a great boss and I'm sure that he will add a lot of value in his new role, so congratulations to him. I'm glad that my former colleagues are seeing the writing on the wall and taking the appropriate steps. One in particular, who I've worked closely with for the past 6 years or so, is on the way out as well. This new opportunity will allow her to spread her wings a bit and try out the "end user" training side of the SAP world. She is a very good business/technical analyst across a lot of different modules, and will excel as a senior consultant for a large SAP consulting firm. Congratulations to her as well.

Nice Tool for Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:38:00 +0000

I'm actually writing this blog post using the Windows Live Writer tool. Since this is my first time using this software, I have not had a chance to dive deep into the functionality quite yet, but so far, I am pretty impressed. Dan McWeeney turned me on to it during SAP TechEd in Las Vegas. At that time, he showed me a couple of things that you can do with Live Writer that you could not do with the blog editor provided by SDN. That was 3 weeks ago, and it is only now that I have found the time to get it installed. I really like that when you start Live Writer, it walks you through the steps to connect to your blog provider, and actually pulls in the look and feel of your blog for previewing. Also, this tool will be good for writing blogs while offline and 30k feet in the air.

Although SDN has implemented a WYSIWYG blog editor, and it is a huge jump from what we had before, I still feel that it is not quite there yet(I'm sure it will be in the future). I'm wondering if this tool would work with SDN? I guess there is only one way to find out!!

Since I'm testing the "Insert Picture" functionality as well, I managed to insert a picture of my new home office. This is where I'll be spending most of my days, when not traveling to Palo Alto. Yes, that monitor is big and bulky, I am looking into getting a flat panel, just waiting for the right price.

My First Assignment

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:32:00 +0000

Today I started my first assignment as a developer with SAP Labs. The coding needed to be done is not all that difficult, but simply not knowing everything there is to know about the overall product, will prove to create some challenges when coding. Since all my SDN pals are in Munich for TechEd this week(and yes, am a little jealous), I plan to stay focused and try not to think about not being in Munich. Sometime, I'll make it over there.(sighing....) Hope everyone has a good time, although I understand that Ed had been MIA. ;)

I will be working on this assignment for the next few weeks, and the next assignment will be very challenging, deep transport stuff. The team is going to Shanghai in a couple weeks(which I declined to go along), so I will have a lot of time to focus on it.

Last week I went to Palo Alto to meet up with the rest of the team at SAP Labs. Everyone was really nice and the whole experience was really great. I can't say what a relief it was. And best of all, free lunch!!! Well, free to me, but someone is paying for it somewhere. ;)

My TechEd Day 3 Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 05:52:00 +0000

Its about 1:00am on Saturday morning and I've just got back home. The kids are in bed and it is really quiet, a good time to reflect on the past week.

On thursday, I spent most of the day in the SDN clubhouse hanging out at the SDN table with the SDN crew and some SDN contributors. Alvaro Tejada Galindo(aka Blag) and I were blogging most of the time, but there were other things going on as well. Craig did his famous SDN Quiz Show, and as expected Blag won this as well. He won a Wii the night before at Hacker Night. We were all jealous.

At the end of the day we all went to the buffet and had a good meal. For me, it was the first substantial meal I had all week. We had good food, and some good laughs.

Next, we all went to the Goo Goo Dolls concert. I've been following the Goo Goo Dolls ever since they went mainstream in the mid 90s, so it was great to hear some of the songs from that time. It brought back a lot of memories from my senior year of high school. Still trying to figure out why there needed to be 100 guitars on either side of the stage. ;)

In summary, I would have to say that this was one of the better TechEds that I've attended in recent years. There was great content spread over a wide range of topics and different technologies. The Community Clubhouse was a blast, and I had a great time hanging out with the SDN gang and chatting about whatever. A few of them will be in Munich as well, but unfortunately for me, I will not be able to make it. I hope to get across the pond to meet the SDN powerhouses from Europe one of these years.

My TechEd Day 2 Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:44:00 +0000

Day 2 started out at the Community Clubhouse, hanging out with Matthias Zeller and Dan McWeeney. The small round tables in the clubhouse make a nice workspace for three. Dan turned me on to dopplr to share my up coming travel with friends. Cool little web app, thanks Dan! Next, had lunch in the GC(Global Communications) room and again wrote yesterday's blog in parallel.

I had planned to go to an Advanced ABAP hands-on session, but after taking a look at the slides on-line, I realized that I have a pretty good handle on the overall content of the session, so I would be wasting a seat in the session. So I decided to once again help Thomas Jung with his second installment of the "Update your ABAP skills to NetWeaver 7.0" session. Again, this session was totally sold out. We even gave up the seats that were on the speaker stage to accommidate as many as possible, but still had to turn some away. Thomas and friends will be doing this session one last time on friday morning, this session is sold out as well, but of course if you get there early enough you can get on standby. I would assume that there may be a few who have tickets, who may not be able to drag themselves out of bed after the Goo Goo Dolls show, so your chances of getting in the friday session on standby are better then in the previous days. As for yesterday's session, it went pretty smooth. As I was walking around helping the attendees with the exercises, it was fun to see their faces when they successfully completed an exercise, especially the Web Dynpro ABAP exercise. It seemed to all make sense to them in the end.

Later that night, was the Adobe Hacker Night hosted by Matthias Zeller of Adobe. There was something like 25 of us, pizza, bar, WII, demos, matrix screen savers, flex apps, free books, prizes, and a little bit of hacking at the end of the night. It was a lot of fun and in my opinion, a big success.

Lastly, this is my fourth TechEd in five years, and I have to say that TechEd is the SAP conference to attend. There is so much to learn and where else can you be exposed to some many technologies within the SAP ecosystem. If you have an opportunity to attend future TechEds, I would highly recommend it. And, no, there is no SAP marketing guy standing over my shoulder. ;)

My TechEd Day 1 Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:35:00 +0000

I had planned on highlighting all that I have been doing each day, but on Day 1, I am finding it hard to remember everything, especially after seeing Dan and Ed's demo at Demo Jam last night. This demo really solidifies the whole meaning of "Anything is possible". I've used that statement a number of times over my SAP career, but I really was not thinking on the same level as Dan and Ed . These guys took a WII and a bunch of open source technologies and mashed them all together giving the user the ability to manipulate applications using WII remotes. I realize that I'm not giving a clear picture and not doing it justice, you really have to see it to appreciate it in full. It looks like something out of movies, really!! I would think that if they were actually allowed to compete, that they would have won Demo Jam all over again this year as well. I believe there will be a video of the demo released in the coming days.

The rest of the Demo Jam was pretty good, the other Jammers had some good ideas and presented them well. One which stood out, was Brian Yarnell's demo which was building powerpoint slides dynamically with real data from the backend. Brian ended up winning the Demo Jam.

Yesterday's events are starting to come back to me as I'm writing this blog. It was a long day, starting with the Mentor breakfast at 7:00am hosted by Mark Finnern. Only a few showed up, but it was nice to meet a few of the Mentors. Then we all went to the keynote together. Afterwards, I tryed to go to a few lection sessions, first I went to a BI session, and couldn't even get in the door, there were people standing in the doorway. So I decided to go to an ABAP session, same deal. So then I decided to use my blogger credentials and go to the Executive Press Conference. This was a session reserved for press, anaylysts and bloggers. There were some really tough questions from the press in this session. Next, had lunch in the GC(Global Communications) room and wrote the community day blog in parallel. In the afternoon, I helped out with a 4 hour-hands on session with Thomas Jung called "Updating your ABAP Skills to NetWeaver 7.0". This session is being presented 3 days this week, and I believe each session is sold out. The attendees really seemed to enjoy what they are learning as it was 6:30 till all of them left the session room, the networking reception started at 5:30, so we had some really hardcode ABAPers in the session, which was great. Which brings us up to Demo Jam, which is always a good time. Looking forward to another good day at TechEd. ;)

My Community Day Hightlights

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:32:00 +0000

I'm here in Las Vegas attending the Community Day and having a great time meeting all of the SDN/BPX powerhouses. This morning, Mark Finnern and Mark Yolton gave the general session, outlining the state of the community. The community has certainly grown over the past couple years, and there are certainly some impressive numbers.

In the morning, I attended a session on RIA applications sponsored by Dan McWeeney and Thomas Jung. Dan showed his latest masterpiece, the AJS(ABAP Javascript) framework which he built within the ABAP Workbench. Very cool stuff. Thomas then came up and showed off his framework around Adobe Flex. It follows the same lines as Dan's framework but leverages the Flex technology instead. Again, very cool stuff.

After lunch, I checked out the session given by Leonardo De Araujo and Alexandre Giguère on the ABAP Report Wizard tool. I had the pleasure of working on this project with them and I had a great time doing so. These guys worked very hard on this solution and they are giving it to the community to build upon.

In the afternoon, I attended the RIA Adobe Flex hands-on session hosted by Matthias Zeller and Ed Herrmann. I went in having absolutely no experience with Flex, but yet left with my very first working Flex application, and a free Flex book.

Tim O'Reilly took some time to answer questions from the SDN/BPX community before his keynote later in the day. It was the first time that I've heard him speak and I was very impressed.

Next, I attended the Townhall Q&A session with Elvira Wallis, SVP NetWeaver Product Management, Zia Yusuf, Executive VP SAP Ecosystem Management, Peter Graf, Excecutive VP of SAP Solution Marketing, and Mark Yolton, VP Community Networks. Some very good questions from the audience and great answers as well.

Tim O'Reilly gave his keynote in front of a sea of people. I understand that a record number 6000 people are attending this year, and I believe that all were at the keynote.

Boom Chicago performed for the SDN/BPX community that night. I've never laughed so hard in my life. If you have an opportunity to see the show sometime, I would highly recommend it. It was a great Community Day evening event. Thanks to the SDN/BPX for that.

I am trying to post a blog about each day of the event, but finding it very frustrating to be in 4 places at one time, and hence, finding time to blog as well, but I will try to update throughout the week.

Unfortunately, I managed to run out of the house on Sunday without a digital camera, so no photos from me. Sorry :(

The Next Chapter

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:11:00 +0000

Some may already be aware, today is my last day with my current employer. On Monday, Community Day(in Vegas), I will offically be an SAP employee. This has been a goal of mine for some time, so it really feels good to have finally achieved it.

I have accepted a position as a Developer with SAP Labs, LLC. I will be working on the SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) product which falls under the Corporate Performance Management(CPM) group. The team working on this project is challenged with bringing the BPC product(formerly known as Outlooksoft) to NetWeaver BI(Business Intelligence).

I will be working from home most of the time and travelling to Palo Alto, once or twice a month for a few days at a time, so the travel is not bad at all. I am certain that this new role will bring new exciting challenges, which may mean a struggle to regularly contribute in the ABAP Forums on SDN.

The End of Chapter One

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:24:00 +0000

This week I gave two weeks notice to my current employer which will bring an end to my ten year career there. As this was my first real job, I've learned a lot which I can take with me. Not just about SAP and ABAP, but about business in general, and developing working relationships. I've had a lot of opportunities to grow as a person and as a developer, and for that I am thankful.

It appears that I may be leaving the company in a difficult position as they have been pretty dependent on my skills and abilities, and they really aren't in a position to aquire a consultant for the interim, but you "got to do" what you "got to do", right? Things haven't been so good for a long while and to top it off, the ECC 6.0 upgrade project, which I've been looking foward to, had been pushed off till spring. In reality, there is simply no way that it's going to happen then either. The lack of time and resources prevents it.

So now, is a pretty good time for me to explore other avenues. Ten years is a pretty long time to be at one company in this industry so I am probably a little over due. The next chapter in my career looks bright and promising, and in my next blog, I will give some more details about that.

Getting Ready for SAP TechEd 07 - Community Day

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:40:00 +0000

Well, we are about three weeks away from TechEd in Las Vegas, and this is about the time that I start getting the TechEd fever(sneeze, sneeze, cough, cough). Yes, literally. It appears that for some strange reason for the past two years, I get sick right before TechEd. Last year is was the week before, this year, three weeks before. I am thankful that it doesn't appear to be a full-fledged cold, but simply a nuisance.

Anyway, I'm really excited about TechEd this year for a few reasons. First, Community Day is really starting to take shape and it appears that there will be some killer sessions going on. The only problem, is that I might have to jump around so that I can attend all of the sessions that are going on simultaneously.

First, I had the opportunity to help out with some coding on a project which Leonardo De Araujo and Alexandre Giguere will be presenting during Community Day, called "Automate ABAP Report Generation using SAP Report Wizard". It was fun to work on this project and I look forward to seeing these guys present it to the community.

Also, I want to sit in on the "SAPlink Brainstorming" session hosted by Ed Herrmann. I'd like to hear about some of the ideas that our community is interested in seeing implemented into the SAPlink tool. The SAPlink tool has grown considerable since last TechEd and there has been a slew of new plug-ins developed by the community.

Next, I wouldn't mind joining the discussion in "How To Keep Your/Your Development Team's Technical Skills Up To Date" hosted by Thomas Jung. This session is listed as a "discussion" type session which should definitely yield some good ideas. I have some idea of where Thomas is going with this session and I have some experience with updating my ABAP skills, so maybe I can add some value here.

Another session I want to check out is the "RIAs in ABAP - Community Driven Developments " session, hosted by Dan McWeeney. Even though I really have no experience in RIA development, I think this session may certainly get me motivated to jump into full force.

Finally, hopefully I'm able to get into the 2 hour hands-on session "Developing Engaging User Interfaces and Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex" hosted by Matthias Zeller, Ed Herrmann, and Dan McWeeney. With all of the buzz surrounding Flex, this session is surely a must.

I'm not sure how all that is going to work out considering we only have one day. Maybe community day will get so big, it will be extended to the whole week before TechEd. Wishful thinking. Hopefully I get the chance to met a lot of SDN contributors throughout the week. Someday I'll jump across the pond to meet fellow SDN contributors from Europe as well. We shall see. ;) Yep, Community Day should prove to be a great day for collaboration, community networking, and of course, learning. And if all that doesn't work out, then there is always the poker table. ;)

In my next blog, I'll take a look at the TechEd sessions that I want to checkout, when I'm not hanging out in the SDN Clubhouse.

Are We Expendable?

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:23:00 +0000

Some recent events at "Company A" has me thinking about who is expendable and who is not. For some reason, I really feel bad when I see positions being eliminated, whether for performance reasons or to reduce head count, simply to make the bottom line "look better". So I think to myself, who is next, and why, and for what? I'm not going to go into detail, but I will say that there are certain things that could be handled better.

But lets focus on IT. Lets say that a fictional company, referred to as "Company A", has a small IT shop. Most, if not all IT personnel, are within the highest non-executive pay scale within the company. So cutting IT headcount looks pretty good to top executives. They see big dollar savings. But what are they loosing in the process? I'll tell you. What sort of price tag can you put on your favorite IT person. For example, lets take a look at Company A's fictional PM functional lead. This guy, configured and implemented the entire PM module single handedly and now pretty much runs by itself. He knows the module like the back of his hand and is very knowledgable about the business processes and intergration points. The user community feels very close to this guy and feels comfortable talking with him about minor issues and future enhancements. He has an open door policy with his users and he can be contacted at anytime. He is friendly and curtious and always has time to listen, even if it is just to be a sounding board. So what dollar amount did you come up with? I would think from the user's side, he would be priceless.

So, when it comes to expendability, is he expendable. I hate to admit it, but yes he is. Why? Because, when it comes down to it, everyone is expendable. I used to think that I was not, in my younger, cockier days, but that notion has swiftly changed over the last couple of years.(that's another story). I think that we may be expendable because, our worth is seen at face value, which, in my opinion, is a shame. The idea of having a go-to person in IT, gives a companies users a warm feeling. A lot of times, our end product may not give the impression of deep, technical knowledge and brain pounding hard work. As long as the end result meets the requirements, the path in which one follows to get there, isn't seen, or appreciated. What we do in IT, can always be done, by less expensive, less knowledgable personnel, whether on or off shore. Why should Company A staff someone, when their work can be done remotely by someone overseas who just got their certification after a week long course. I know what you are thinking, I am not a fan of out-sourcing, I believe that you get what you pay for, which can potentially be inferior work.

To summarize, I really hope that my recent thoughts are unsubstantial in regard to the future of IT in the US, but I can't help thinking about it. Company heads are always looking for ways to improve the bottom line, and in my opinion, you can't put a price tag on a good IT team. There is more to the worth of an IT team, then the end products they produce.

Frustration with Order Entry

noreply@blogger.com (Rich Heilman) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:43:00 +0000

So I've been working on an order entry enhancement which has proved to be more than frustrating at times. Just when you think you have all of the pieces working, something else breaks, and when that gets fixed, something else breaks, and so on. I got to say that I am 80% happy with what I've done, but there are some pieces that I don't like at all, but are necessary in order for the whole thing to work properly. For example, the user exits within order entry are a big problem. Anyone who has worked on these, knows that they are implemented using form routines or subroutines which are housed inside of include programs. My biggest problem was that a certain routine was called more than once, and the number of times was not consistant and I needed to fill a value during the last time it is executed. So if it is possible to be called more than once and you don't know how many times it is called, how do you know which is the last time, right? This is where the code takes a very ugly turn, it is only two statements, but it is really ambigous and meaningless to another developer. He might come along to work on this section of code and say, "What the hell is this all about". All I can say is, "Well, comment it out, and you'll find out really quick".

I also wrote another program for this project which transportation will use to move entire sales orders from one plant to another as well as change the delivery date. Sounds easy, right? Well, I thought so too. In this case, I am using the BAPI, BAPI_SALESORDER_CHANGE. This is a great BAPI, if you dot all the (i)s and cross all the (t)s. My program was working as far as changing the plant and delivery date, but it was also saving the orders as incomplete which was not caught during testing. Here I come to find out that when changing the orders using my program, it was not firing the configuration logic(variant configurator) which contains all of the characteritics as well as drives the pricing. At this point, I pretty much threw my hands in the air in disbelief. Back to the debugger I go and find that the whole problem is that I was not passing the configuration to the BAPI. Ok, so I'm thinking, why should I have to, I'm not changing the configuration at all. I've learned to appreciate BAPIs because of there ease of use, and that they perform the functions completely, and will let you know when they need something that you are not passing. In this case, this BAPI didn't tell me anything. Very disappointing that a BAPI would let me call it in such a way that I am screwing up orders. Anyway, after passing the config tables to the BAPI, it seemed to solve the problem.

So to summarize, my two gripes are 1) I know it is not feasible with all of the implementations out there, but the user exit implementation should be thrown out altogether. I understand that there has been alot of enhancement points added to order entry via the Enhancement Framework. This does me no good right now, as my upgrade project has been pushed back to next year. I plan to re-implement my user exit coding into these enhancement points in the new system, I would assume that a lot of other customers may do the same if time allows. 2) BAPIs are supposed to complete a business object, they should never leave you with a success message and not complete all of the necessary backend transactions, or updates. And they should always tell you when you are missing something that is required to complete the transaction successfully.