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While all you say is pretty much true, you have to see it in the context of the service that SAP provides. SAP implements the workflow of their costumers (the p
by Argorak 14y ago
While all you say is pretty much true, you have to see it in the context of the service that SAP provides. SAP implements the workflow of their costumers (the process is called "tailoring"), not the other way around. As every customer has a different workflow, the maintenance nightmare you describe is always looming, especially as the systems are built to run for decades. SAP knows this, but sadly, there is no good solution for this problem.
Full disclosure: I worked for SAP Research, but not on ERP systems.
- skrebbel 14y agoThat's not a reason for the core tooling and docs to be crap, though. (I don't know whether they are, but this thread gives me the impression that they are)
- Argorak 14y agoThats true and I don't want to defend this in any way. But its a way to understand why SAP is like it is: the "core" you speak of is already fragmented and by chance, it can even happen that this core knowledge is invalidated by something further down the stack. Documentation of 100 edge cases wouldn't help you much in that regard. As others have stated, the oracle world is not much better in that respect. Its a way to understand why anyone would even buy such "crap". Because thats the crap that solves the customers problem somehow and there is no competing company that would even come close to offering a similar service. I don't mean to imply that no one could ;).