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I had a customer project two years ago: Import data that came out of SAP HR-PT into a MySQL database. HR-PT is the SAP personnel time recording system. This thi

I had a customer project two years ago: Import data that came out of SAP HR-PT into a MySQL database. HR-PT is the SAP personnel time recording system. This thing generates plain text tables with each entry having a fixed-width data type which has a peculiar German name. The 21st century solution for this would be an XML file. So the impression I got is that the whole SAP codebase seems to be stuck in the 1970s. Working with this stuff is so complex that in Germany, it's an often-told inside joke in the IT industry that some small and medium sized businesses actually became insolvent by moving to an SAP-based system.

arethuza 15y ago
My impression of the Tier-1 ERP systems is that they are effectively software mainframes.
- mbesto 15y ago
  It depends on your definition. As I understand it, mainframes are a 2 tiered approach (client-server). SAP, like most systems today are built in a 3 tiered approach (client-application-server). So much of what changed in the mainframe days shifted most of the processing to the application layer, rather than logic purely built on a massive database. The software is good in a sense that it gets it's job done. For example, should an application that completes financial transactions for one company be any different for another? This is why companies continue to buy SAP. Usability is a big issue from the client side.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    "Tier-1 ERP" means the big boys (SAP, JDE, maybe MS Dynamics AX) not a software architecture.
mtrn 15y ago
A friend of mine once said: SAP sucks the blood out of the mittelstand.
- arethuza 15y ago
  "SAP is how Lucifer interacts with our world" From: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/2143219/Allegedly-Rigged-Product-Demo-In-SAP-Suit-Goes-Missing http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/2143219/Allegedly-Rig...
infinite_snoop 15y ago
While SAP is not exactly cutting edge they have been adding some features to ABAP (their proprietary language) that you would expect to find in a modern language. For instance, in your example you could use the CALL TRANSFORMATION statement to convert your table directly to XML. The problem is that you can still write code as you would have done in the 1970's and SAP won't complain.
bonzoesc 15y ago
> Working with this stuff is so complex that in Germany, it's an often-told inside joke in the IT industry that some small and medium sized businesses actually became insolvent by moving to an SAP-based system. I've heard of this almost happening; a malfunctioning label printer can cause an entire plant to shut down for weeks while consultants work to find the problem.
pasbesoin 15y ago
I've done somewhat similar work. I found it best ultimately to pull individual transactions -- as a text/report dump -- and then work them up in a combination of Excel with hooked in regular expression support and Perl and whatever else (i.e. for a front end interface). Excel provided a convenient interface for necessary manual sanitation. Perl provided enough speed along with flexibility and further pattern matching. Other stuff made the results accessible to accounting staff. For my purposes, SAP was a giant data entry system. And a crappy one, at that, as one of the most important fields for my work was not a field, but one of an arbitrary number of entries glommed together in a free text field where only the maintenance -- or not -- of data entry conventions by the many individuals creating records provided any degree of sanity. Thank goodness for regular expressions! Separately, it's not just the "sexiness" of the problem at hand. It's that in typical SAP environments, the level of bureaucracy to get anything done is overwhelming. Your technical problems are far and away secondary; for example, just getting what you need on a report, any report, in a format you can at least begin with, is a six month ordeal. Having your hands on the pulse of billion dollar divisions is kind of cool. The six or eight layers of wankers you have to go through, to accomplish this -- not so much so.

arethuza 15y ago

My impression of the Tier-1 ERP systems is that they are effectively software mainframes.

mbesto 15y ago
It depends on your definition. As I understand it, mainframes are a 2 tiered approach (client-server). SAP, like most systems today are built in a 3 tiered approach (client-application-server). So much of what changed in the mainframe days shifted most of the processing to the application layer, rather than logic purely built on a massive database. The software is good in a sense that it gets it's job done. For example, should an application that completes financial transactions for one company be any different for another? This is why companies continue to buy SAP. Usability is a big issue from the client side.
- arethuza 15y ago
  "Tier-1 ERP" means the big boys (SAP, JDE, maybe MS Dynamics AX) not a software architecture.

mtrn 15y ago

A friend of mine once said: SAP sucks the blood out of the mittelstand.

arethuza 15y ago
"SAP is how Lucifer interacts with our world" From: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/2143219/Allegedly-Rigged-Product-Demo-In-SAP-Suit-Goes-Missing http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/2143219/Allegedly-Rig...

infinite_snoop 15y ago

While SAP is not exactly cutting edge they have been adding some features to ABAP (their proprietary language) that you would expect to find in a modern language. For instance, in your example you could use the CALL TRANSFORMATION statement to convert your table directly to XML. The problem is that you can still write code as you would have done in the 1970's and SAP won't complain.

bonzoesc 15y ago

> Working with this stuff is so complex that in Germany, it's an often-told inside joke in the IT industry that some small and medium sized businesses actually became insolvent by moving to an SAP-based system. I've heard of this almost happening; a malfunctioning label printer can cause an entire plant to shut down for weeks while consultants work to find the problem.

pasbesoin 15y ago

I've done somewhat similar work. I found it best ultimately to pull individual transactions -- as a text/report dump -- and then work them up in a combination of Excel with hooked in regular expression support and Perl and whatever else (i.e. for a front end interface). Excel provided a convenient interface for necessary manual sanitation. Perl provided enough speed along with flexibility and further pattern matching. Other stuff made the results accessible to accounting staff. For my purposes, SAP was a giant data entry system. And a crappy one, at that, as one of the most important fields for my work was not a field, but one of an arbitrary number of entries glommed together in a free text field where only the maintenance -- or not -- of data entry conventions by the many individuals creating records provided any degree of sanity. Thank goodness for regular expressions! Separately, it's not just the "sexiness" of the problem at hand. It's that in typical SAP environments, the level of bureaucracy to get anything done is overwhelming. Your technical problems are far and away secondary; for example, just getting what you need on a report, any report, in a format you can at least begin with, is a six month ordeal. Having your hands on the pulse of billion dollar divisions is kind of cool. The six or eight layers of wankers you have to go through, to accomplish this -- not so much so.