Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: Excellent book - really liked the graphics on every page. Examples are clear and there is lots of useful material to read through. I used it as a course to begin with and now find myself referring back to examples and tips repeatedly. I did not notice any abundance of spelling mistakes referred to by other amazon reviewers, I did notice however a European style of writing but that can hardly be considered incorrect ! Altogether this book surpasses any other Business Objects introduction course available on the market that I have looked at and I think is good value for the price considering it is specialty material. Two of my colleagues also read the book instead of taking a starter class and are now up and running with the product building and formatting their own reports.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful well written introduction to BO
Review: Excellent book - really liked the graphics on every page. Examples are clear and there is lots of useful material to read through. I used it as a course to begin with and now find myself referring back to examples and tips repeatedly. I did not notice any abundance of spelling mistakes referred to by other amazon reviewers, I did notice however a European style of writing but that can hardly be considered incorrect ! Altogether this book surpasses any other Business Objects introduction course available on the market that I have looked at and I think is good value for the price considering it is specialty material. Two of my colleagues also read the book instead of taking a starter class and are now up and running with the product building and formatting their own reports.
Rating:
Summary: Wow - English written in English
Review: I can't believe people moan about the fact that this is written in English when British people have to put up with everything IT related written in American.Welcome to the real world !
Rating: 
Summary: High price book, minimal value
Review: I was hoping to receive a really good reference book for BO 5.1, but that's not what I found. The book is a very basic guide that offers minimal value, yet is very expensive. There are tons of grammatical and spelling errors that make you wonder who proofread it before publishing. If you want a very basic introductory into BO reporting, this book may be useful to you. On the other hand, if you are looking for a more intermediate or advanced reference, search for another source.
Rating:
Summary: Good material at last !
Review: I was so pleased to find at last some quality material on BusinessObjects - this is obviously written by people who know the product. The explanations were clear and in depth where necessary yet not overwhelming for our basic users. I liked the new universe and database on which the course was based and the exercises were well thought out. The only problem we had was fitting all the content into a one day class but if you plan to read it on your own, you will definately have enough content for a couple of days. The CD that came with it was good too, it meant our students had color to look at for every page. I was also pleased to see very little blank white space in the manual -they did a great job in providing plenty of useful points on practially every page. I hope the author(s) release a designer guide too !
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: Is this a book? Once I got used to the typos and weird European grammar, I realized that there was nothing to this book. It is so simple that I had more questions after reading it then when I started. Luckily, I purchased another book at the same time and it has answered most of my questions.
Rating: 
Summary: Good fast intro to BO
Review: Neat book - due to budget cuts we used the course instead of a class for our accounting team who are excel addicts ! - we thought it would be a hard sell but they liked it a lot and are up to speed with Business Objects. Book has 11 chapters and some neat tips in the back section. I recommend it as a good book to pick up Business Objects if you have no previous experience
Rating:
Summary: Good Intro to BO Reporter Book
Review: This book is perfect for someone looking for a way to get up to speed in BO quickly. In comparing it to BO's official End User Reporting course(s) content, it covers all topics - even through the Advanced features - in 11 short chapters (18-35 pages each) with exercises. Yes, there are some typos, but none so bad that your ability to learn the content is hindered. As a novice, I wasn't able to get through the book in one day, but I really liked the ability to go at my own pace (vs. being slowed down by the classroom). I especially liked how, as they built on the content, they referred back to specific page numbers of past lessons if you needed a refresher. I didn't like the paperback format, so I went to Kinko's and had the spine cut off so I could drop the pages into my own 3-ring binder > much easier to flip. Other than that, the only other negative I found was that if you don't have access to Designer, the CD-Rom with the sample database is useless. I hope that Noscentia will publish a book for the Administrative end of BO (Designer, Supervisor) in the near future.
Rating:
Summary: Better than taking a class
Review: this is a cool book and I wish I had found this publication before I had taken the offical course by Business Objects . This book had way more content.
Rating:
Summary: Good course to learn BusinessObjects 5.1
Review: Very useful book to learn Business Objects - I agree with the other review from Canada that it is an ideal entry point for the novice user. This book is not one of those huge fat 1000 page bibles on everything there is to know about the product, it is as the editors description says, a very focused training course which can be covered in a day or so. As a designer not overly familar with the end user modue, it helped clarify for me a lot of gray areas that you can miss by simple experimentation - in other words it spends time describing some very useful functionality but without being either long winded or too brief. I particularly liked the drill down chapter and also their very clear explanations of the cube vs the report and how the two work in tandem and what to expect from measures, dimensions etc. I would have liked to see some case studies in an appendix or something to show some actual company reports but that's probably just me being greedy!
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