Diversified Semantic Layer

We're going to keep this short as we've still got an Orlando-sized hangover. 

Our shizzle

• Dallas is itching to see a fight.
• Dallas offers some help to those who are trying to use BusinessObjects Explorer in XI3.2.

How-to Corner

• Nerd magic for user management in SAP BusinessObjects.
• Translating baseball to basketball via the international language of statistics. 

BI Talk

• Someone isn't all that impressed with SAP Lumira Cloud yet.
• 4.1 in RTC. IANAL, but WTF?
• Analytics wrap of SAPPHIRE Now.

Enterprise What-Not

• The SAP HANA Cloud Platform in theory.
• The SAP HANA Cloud Platform in practice.
• Thorsten of innovation, adoption, and (to a lesser extent) kitten pictures.
• Jon's SAPPHIRE Wrap.

No videos this week. They're WAY too loud for this headache.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion: Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott,  Aiaz Kazi, Thorsten Franz, Shawn Penner, Pieter Hendrikx, Chris Kim,

Couldn't make it to Orlando this week? Follow the fun this week with ASUG and SAP.

Our shizzle

• Join Eric, Greg, Jamie, and Jon Reed to figure out what you need to know to get the most out of Orlando.
• Dallas was the first to note that SAP is in the process of replacing attractive people with decaying weeds.
• Greg shows you the breadcrumbs to find your missing monitoring metrics.
• On the eve of SAP's biggest show, let's review Dallas's experience with Tableau.

How-to Corner

• If this ends with someone sporting a Richard Simmons afro, it's all been worthwhile.
• BI4 migrations: still, apparently, something we need to talk about.
• What your new BICC can't measure, it can't manage.
• Start your own Crystal roadshow.

BI Talk

• In case you missed it, SAP Lumira Cloud is a thing. So is Lumira. Visual Intelligence? Not so much.
• Run some BI on your IT.
• Are creative questions the big problem with big data?

Enterprise What-Not

• If our preview of this week's conference isn't enough, try Jon's.
• "Internet of Things" blah blah blah KYRIE IRVING!
• One instance to rule them all (and save some coin)?
• We're gonna need some sort of party game where we get to tag the analysts at SAPPHIRE Now/ASUG Annual Conference.
• The tech conference circuit exposed.
• Feel free to buy Sameer a beer in Orlando this week to celebrate his anniversary.

Hope you can make it to Orlando. If not send us a beer (but beware the little ones amongst us).

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion: Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Coy Yonce, Ron Keler, Vijay Vijayasankar, Doug Henschen, Phil Fersht, Zach Holman, Sameer Patel,

Hope you're all booked for ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE Now. If not, you're probably be schlepping your "now easier to find" schwag to your hotel room in Tampa.

Speaking of, Canadians are not technically schwag.

Our shizzle

• Dallas offers oms advice on getting big data on the small screen.
• Josh comes in with Universe design best practices.
• Dallas takes a more serious look at what might be included in BI5.
• Clint makes the case that SAP needs to market more, at least on some fronts.

How-to Corner

• How SAP started exploring their own champagne room (sic).
• Still filling up your conference dance card? Here's BI content, and he's something for the kids.
• Want your own high-visibility cloud?
• If you liked BI4, you'll love BI4.1. 
• SP6 nitty gritty.
• Zero may represent nothing, but in a visualization it can mean everything.
• If you've been having issues publishing your new Dashboards dashboard, you aren't alone.
• Charting and ranking and sorting, oh my.

BI Talk

• Tough to manage self-service BI if you want it to be all things to all people.
• Here's a bookmark if you're looking to keep with ASUG's BI Strategic SIG.
• Data quality matters to all of us, even if we don't know it.
• Bill Inmon something, big data something, data scientist something.

Enterprise What-Not

• Jonathan Becher teases what the next "new black" will be for SAP.
• Congrats, Vitaliy. 
• Advice for those of you who haven't mastered live-tweeting a keynote.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Courtesy of Doghouse Diaries, who we must assume are on #teamQdoba (Also known as team #notDallas).

Contributors in some form or fashion: Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Jonathan Becher, Ryan Goodman, Corey Adams, Blair Wheadon, Mark Richardson, Vitaliy Rudnytskiy, Vijay Vijayasankar, Gabe Orthous, Angad Singh, Tammy Powlas, Gary Hooker, Bill Inmon, Jonathan Haun, Robert Kosara, Ahmed Sherif,

This week we're all thinking about Boston.

Our shizzle

• Jayne Landry joined Eric, Jamie, and Greg this week to discuss buying BOBJ by the bundle.

How-to Corner

• Always worth spending a little time to get more out of SAP Support.
• Chart geekery.
• Probes. You know, the good kind.

BI Talk

• This post on tool selection is interesting, but the comments are even better.
• Failure (video).
• HANA tweetchat with a couple of the "friends of the layer."

Enterprise What-Not

• Just because we can give HANA a price doesn't mean we can comprehend it's value.
• Leave it to the Ozzies to bring an air cannon to a nerd fight.
• ERP, BusinessObjects, and Sybase in decline?
• In-memory isn't just for SAP.
• Who doesn't love building "apps"?

Really looking forward to seeing you all at ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE Now (conferences make us all nostalgic). 

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion: Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott,  Jayne Landry, Sascha Wenninger, Stephen Silver, Mico Yuk, Steve Lucas, Dennis Howlett, Robert Branger, Ryan Goodman, 

Starting to get a little quiet around here in the pre-ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE Now lull. Looking forward to seeing you all down there.

Our shizzle

• Dallas encourages you to read the small print regarding your small screen.

How-to Corner

• Speaking of mobile, here is how to customize your background images.
• Nerd alert (this is Legos, FYI, so don't fly past).

BI Talk

• If you're thinking about competing with SAP, SAP would like to help.
• Time to tweak your timeline.
• Finally, the exploding pie chart has a little competition.

Enterprise What-Not

• Big ups to ASUGNews on their new site, and for not using a pie chart for the visualization in the middle.
• It ain't easy being green, but SAP thinks it is worth it.

Anybody remember these?

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion: Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Scott Priest, Kurt Bilafer, Tom Raftery, Xavier Hacking,

The most important number? 4 of 6 DSLayer correspondents will be there.

Our shizzle

• The crew invites Ethan Jewett along to talk about what the semantic layer might look like in the year 2000 2018.
• Dallas offers an April 1st-inspired peek into the next major release of SAP Business Intelligence.

How-to Corner

• When it comes to HANA, cramming it in as fast as possible is important.
• Look both ways before crossing.
• More cheap HANA.

BI Talk

• This list of visualization technologies is interesting, but not terribly practical for everyday use.
• Mostly linking to this based on the terrible hair on "Map Business Data Needs".
• "Aw baby, we never stopped loving you."
• Associative analytics? Powerful, but not new.
• We're gonna need a Fitbit forum on SCN before too long.
   

Enterprise What-Not

• We're not going political for now, but this is a powerful visualization. 
• IPO news of interest.

Let's hope SAP Analytics Product Managers have taken note of this chart...

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion: Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Ethan Jewett, Corey Adams, John Appleby, Saskia Battersby, Scott Wallask, Robert Branger, Robert Kosara, Xavier Hacking, Doug Henschen

Before we saying anything else, we want to say congratulations to a few of our very favoritist people for getting promoted. Good luck, Nellie and Tom. 

Our shizzle

• Josh sat down with Irfan Khan to find out a little bit more about the Real-Time Data Platform.
• Eric warns you about calculation engine changes, which happen more often than you'd think.
• Jamie is a snake as well.

How-to Corner

• Think she picked German Shepard cause she works with SAP stuff?
• If you haven't yet cashed in your SAP Visual Intelligence free trial chips yet.
• The Upgrade Management Tool, because, quite frankly, nothing else quite works. 
• For those of you living in the past, SAP hasn't forgotten about you.
• What's in a "null", or, more to the point, what isn't?

BI Talk

• Big data taking a turn as big brother.
• Who else thinks a second "Y" axis should be referred to as the "Why" axis?
• Guess it wasn't enough for Harvard to embarrass New Mexico, now they want to poke their noses into our business.
• Mico, Jon, BI -- what more could you possibly need?

Enterprise What-Not

• If they were going to remake Training Day with an SAP twist, would Jon be Ethan Hawke or Denzel Washington?
• SAP HANA for extraordinarily-well-compensated-and-generally-smart-but-still-occasionally-when-it-comes-to-technical-things dummies.
• Tough to argue with this.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Here's hoping your Thanksgiving looked as delicious as Mark's.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Nellie Greely, James Fisher, Irfan Khan, Teri Sun, Benjamin Asbeck, Pieter Hendrikx, David Taylor, John Appleby, Dell Stinnent, Mico Yuk, Kurt Bilafer, Noel Hollis, Mark Yolton,

Hope you enjoy the Toasted Layer while you still can.

Our shizzle

• Eric urges you to keep your deployment as clean as a very clean whistle.

How-to Corner

• Data leisurist?  
• If fast isn't good enough for you, HANA can also be persistent. 
• If only we could create content this fast.
• Row level security is sooo ten minutes ago.
• Wussies will run these scripts in DEV first.
• Die, Deski.

BI Talk

• Mico and Jon on the state of BI.
• Having some fun with SAP's new sports focus.
• People who want to keep Deski are nuts.
• Showmanship matters.
• Don't become a chart junkie.

Enterprise What-Not

• This may not be your grandmother's IT, but you can still be proud to be there. 
• Really seems like a list of things that can go wrong with big data ought to be more than 5 measly items long (ahem).
• Shadow IT, potentially not the devil.

If you were in Melbourne this week, hopefully you were able to catch our man Josh chatting us up.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Ron Keler, Chris Kim, Robert Kosara, Paul Grill, Jonathan Haun, Stephen O'Grady, Shawn Penner, Chad Skelton, Vijay Vijayasankar,  Mico Yuk, 

SAP Support would like to treat you like an end user. In the good way.

Our shizzle

• Dallas notes that SAP is still relying on Oracle for some things.
• Clint would like for everyone to take a moment to think about master data management.
• Dallas encourages all of our kids to learn how to think.

How-to Corner

• How to screw up a product launch.
• Can we interest anyone in a Visual Intelligence tweetchat?
• Predict this.

BI Talk

• Women in BI can be few and far between.
• BI @ TDWI.
• Include a picture of Steve Lucas, get toasted (with bonus something about "big data", whatever that is).
• The new Web Intelligence charting engine, getting better all the time.
• If there is one universal truth, it's that college kids will do ANYTHING for free software.
• If there are two universal truths, the other one is that grown ups love free posters about dashboard design.

Enterprise What-Not

• Dip your toe in the HANA water cloud.
• SAP, your new SharePoint mobile client.
• That's very sportsmanlike.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Thierry Audas, Saskia Battersby, Pieter Hendrikx, Doug Henschen, Cindi Howson, Chris Kanaracus, Tammy Powlas, Kristen Scheffler, David Taylor, Lyndsay Wise, Mico Yuk,

Enjoy your week while we still silently stew that this hasn't yet been colocated with this.

Our shizzle

• Eric would kindly like to introduce you to Zimkhita Buwa.
• If you can forgive the low-hung fruit, Greg would like to argue that sizing does matter.
• Dallas wonders aloud just how much longer SAP can claim its magic status.
• Eric, taking BI on the road, or at least on the device.

How-to Corner

• If you're gonna learn HANA, Tom Jung is probably the right man to learn from. 
• Buzzword bingo at it's worst.
• No word yet if Dave is offering a discount on enterprise support for his "free universe tool"-bug.

BI Talk

• Guess they didn't think we were ready for "The Return of the Son of Feature Pack."
• Just in case you need another South African BI expert.
• It's like someecards, but for Analytics.

Enterprise What-Not

• Ah snap, Frank Scavo.
• Sore loser.

Let's hope stage fright does not ensue. 

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed,Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Zimkhita Buwa, Ethan Jewett, Thomas Jung, Tammy Powlas, Dave Rathbun, Frank Scavo, 

For those of you who love taking online surveys but worry that your answers aren't going to good use.

Our shizzle

• Dallas apparently missed the whole gamification trend.
• Jamie took a long look at the newest Gartner Magic Quadrant.
• Won't you meet Dallas in St. Louis (sign up now to get your bonus Eric and Jamie)?

How-to Corner

• Live Office. Can't really add anything to that.
• Hurrah publishing!
• Single version of the truth, anyone?

BI Talk

• Excel was a lot less dangerous when it was limited to 65,000 rows.
• Back to the ducks, eh? Just start looking at your data already!
• Could fast at least be a color? Plaid, perhaps?
• Is SAP throwing up its own champagne in its Mobile BI strategy?
• When BI goes bad.

Enterprise What-Not

• An upgrade issue a way's out.
• We don't understand how a heart is a spade, but somehow the vital connection is made.
• Is SAP on HANA any better an idea than Oracle Fusion?

Can't wait to see Sue Keohan's version of this.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed,Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Kurt Bilafer, Robert Blackburn, Franz Dill, Howard Dresner, Noel Hollis, Dennis Howlett, Sameer Patel, Tammy Powlas, Ahmed Sherif, Jim Spath, Coy Yonce, Mico Yuk, Yariv Zur,

Hope you enjoyed the NBA All-Star break a little more this last weekend.

How-to Corner

• Looking to win a bar bet at your next conference? Try memorizing this.
• And you thought getting to BI4 was tough when you didn't have to drag BW along for the ride...

BI Talk

• Does top third really equate to "magic"?
• The case that numbers alone aren't any fun.
• When it comes to Mobile BI, Explorer gets the least words.
• Very occasionally the old dog's old tricks work just fine.
• When"BI", like "team", lacks an "I".
• And Vijay says, and then Vijay says, and then Vijay says...

Enterprise What-Not

• Next thing you know they'll say that BusinessObjects has lost it's "platform-agnostic" DNA.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Jim Holincheck, Luke Marson, Jonathon Haun, Blair Wheadon, Dennis Howlett, Ethan Jewett, Vijay Vijayasankar, Doug Henschen, 

Don't miss ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE, which they have thoughtfully started on a Tuesday to accommodate us taking care of the mothers in our lives.

Our shizzle

• Eric pokes a few holes in the whole "CMS on HANA" narrative that hasn't really taken off at all.
• Dallas's decade.

How-to Corner

• Really looking forward to handing out 3D glasses at the office.
• Hold the Hadoop! Some people don't think Big Data is a Big Deal.
• Infographics, though by their nature "of the devil," are not apparently that hard to make.

BI Talk

• #9: Get a mention on the toasted layer.
• Tough to read this without thinking of this.
• Our take: some users are too dumb to program around. (Counterpoint)
• We can agree with the specifics of this post if not the spirit of it, as we've been riding by on our good looks for years.
• Is your organization ready for the big blue BI stack?

Enterprise What-Not

• Guess we've given up on the whole "HTML5" thing.
• You may pay for "Standard Support," but in our experience it's usually "exemplary."

Greg found the perfect palette for showing what BI4 does to Big Data.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed,Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Matt Hawkins, Bernard Wehbe, James Fisher, George Van Antwerp, Noel Hollis, Rob Heller, Frank Scavo, Donald MacCormick, Ethan Jewett,

This piece was written about the SAP Mentors but really applies to community engagement at large.

Our shizzle

• Eric reminds us that even though we are all despise our users, business buy-in matters.
• Dallas looks forward to one mobile app to rule us all.
• We'll bet Dallas also wishes there was one OS to support at work and at home.

How-to Corner

• Not exactly how to, but a translation guide would be nice.
• The compound object compendium.

BI Talk

• Appreciate the transparency, but this model also obviously pays out for SAP.
• Perhaps we should master the 2Ds we can print out first.
• Finally, some data that is truly actionable.

Enterprise What-Not

• Color us disinterested in Blackberry's latest late-mover move.
• Run Deere-ier?
• Think Rapid Application Development frameworks will fix everything? You may want to slow down for just a minute.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed,Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Blair Wheadon, Jonathan Becher, Matthias Steiner,

Special thanks to all of the ASUG Volunteers this weekend who planned out our content for the rest of the year.

Our shizzle

• Josh and Ethan are going to need a lot of comments if you want them to come back for a second season of discussing BW/BO.
• Eric claims that the number of steps to get to BI4 shall neither be 11 or 9, but rather 10.
• Dallas makes the case that he should be a judge at the next Fonties.
• Greg seems to have forgotten how he earns his money.

How-to Corner

• You may have 99 problems, but promoting the BEx doesn't need to be one.
• I dread what SAPs grade would have been a year ago.
• Hint: It isn't going to be Carson Palmer.
• Head's down, people.

BI Talk

• When John says stones, he really means huevos.
• How many "year of the dashboard"s can we have in a row?
• Our brains still perceive that Stephen Few is a tremendous d-bag.
• Makes you wonder why no one has released an enterprise class Magic 8 Ball.

Enterprise What-Not

• Seems that app distribution isn't what is holding enterprise mobility back.
• Do we still all get our new account reps in February?
• You don't have to be athletic to be mobile.

We're seldom encouraged to drink more beer as a resolution, but that may be why we love the folks at RedMonk so much.

Need more links? Try the JonERP News Feed, ASUGNews Weekly Wrap, and Timo Elliott's Analytics Roundup.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed,Tom Wailgum, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Ethan Jewett, Xavier Hacking, John Appleby, Aaron Weiss, Cindi Howson, Steve O'Grady, Paul Grill, Doug Henschen, James Governor,

Our Shizzle

• Dallas takes on the birds and the bees, in the data discovery sense.
• Eric just wants your data to all get along.
• Dallas says the road ahead with BI4 will be patchy.

How-to Corner

• Mico's tips for teambuilding in 2013.
• If you know what ".jsp" means, this may be for you.
• Good (albeit old) news for Explorer fans. Who also happen to own BW.

BI Talk

• Is HANA the first of the camel's nose to get us all on Sybase?
• Guerilla BI.
• Timo, getting a little toasty.
• BI may not be for everybody yet, but it oughta be. 
• Where does Tableau start and Alteryx start?

Enterprise What-Not

• Who remembers back when "green" was the new black?
• SAP HANA decision trees.
• This was a lot more fun when BusinessObjects was 53% of new license revenue.

And what do the distinguished engineers think of Business Suite on HANA?

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Doug Henschen, Dennis Howlett, Cindi Howson, Courtney Bjorlin, Timo Elliott, Jim Spath, Tom Wailgum, Mico Yuk, David Lai, 

Hope to see you all at ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE for some awkward man-hugs. 

Our shizzle

• Eric dug in for a conversation with Corey Adams, bear-poker extraordinaire.
• Josh and Ethan, two wild and crazy guys. As regards BOBJ and BW anyway.
• If you wanted to get to know Josh a little better, now is as good a time as any.
• Dallas thinks that you don't need no stinking passwords.
• Jamie philosphizing on the not-so-common semantic layer in BI4.

How-to Corner

• Calendar won't work in spring (ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE) or fall (SBOUC or SAP Teched)? Consider this with your conference budget.
• Visual Intelligence is super fast, once it is up and running anyway.
• For those of you going into probe withdrawal.

BI Talk

• We can seldom agree more with Timo, but this is definitely not one of those times. 
• Self service BI, still a great white buffalo.
• Maybe there won't be that many semantic layers soon after all.
• Turns out BOBJ customers are cheap to their own detriment.

Enterprise What-Not

• Meet 5 of the Humans of SAP.
• SAP announced this week that its Business Suite is running on HANA, and everyone blogged. Here's Dennis with the broad view, and Cindi with a more BI-centric angle.
• It always starts out with business opportunities, but then it turns all SkyNet all of a sudden.
• Geraldine, we hardly knew ye (which may explain this).

And speaking of new meme creation.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Ethan Jewett, Tom Wailgum, Joe McKendrick, Corey Adams, Moya Watson, Dennis Howlett, Donald MacCormick, Karin Tillotson, Cindi Howson, Paul Grill, Andrew McAfee, David Taylor, Michael Welter, Timo Elliott, 

Hope you're all rested up from the break. Time to start planning to get to ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE right away.

Our shizzle

• Our year in Audio Review.
• The official SBOUC Tweetup video is now available.
• All work and moderate play made Dallas a busy boy this year.
• Jamie sat in with Jon Reed and a host of others to provide a Report Card and Debate about the state of BI at SAP.
• Dallas notes that bigger is now "officially" better. Unless of course we're talking paper.

How-to Corner

• HANA. Mobile. Zen.
• Dynamic database connections? Yes, have some.
• Upgrade Management Tool party.
• Monthly Xcelsius magic.
• Just in case you all didn't spend your holiday break learning more about the LCM.

BI Talk

• ASUGNews wraps up the year in SAP BI.
• It's nice when analysis backs up what we've "known" for years (that more alcohol makes wine better, in this case).
• Timo talks Mobile and Big Data.
• Wonder if it's possible to have a hot podcast hand?
• Explorer, trying to get some love. 

Enterprise What-Not

• Not listed? Opening your Oracle maintenance bill.
• Couldn't start or end anything last year without mentioning HANA. Holds up in 2013, too.
• Wrapping up the year in HCM, including SAP's newest flagship acquisition.
• Does smarter software lead to smarter cities?
• Congrats to Vijay, who makes what may very well be the announcement of the year.

Think our progeny's newfound charting engine will get us an invite to Monkigras? 

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, David Taylor, Timo Elliott, John Appleby, Derek Loranca, Jonathan Becher, Chris Kanaracus, Courtney Bjorlin, Benjamin Asbeck, Luke Marson, Tom Wailgum, Xavier Hacking, David Lai, Tom Raftery, Vijay Vijayasankar, James Governor, 

With no more Toasted Layers until after the holidays, we heartily recommend you spend some of your non-family time giving a whirl to the new ASUG.com. 

Our shizzle

• More on BW & BOBJ from Josh and Ethan.
• Clint goes native at SAP Inside Track - Singapore.
• Jamie offers up some advice regarding who should get the first hit off of the BI rock.
• Dallas provides some context to the stupid piece-of-crap unforgivable Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack. 

How-to Corner

• Want to add a little sparkle-line to your Webi reports in time for the holidays?
• Dashboard loading screen how-to.
• Installing Visual Intelligence and Predictive Analytics seems... involved.
• Want to run Explorer on your iPhone? Want to skip the application password? 

BI Talk

• Should we all store our Word documents in HANA to future-proof them?
• Can't help but wonder if the egg nog/brandy curve also dip.
• Can we please stop comparing HANA to Exalytics already?
• mag·nan·i·mous adjective \mag-ˈna-nə-məs\ - Being willing to plug someone else's BI podcast.
• Corey and Kurt -- this should be a new show on Disney.
• BW vs HANA.

Enterprise What-Not

• You'd sort of think computers would be the one thing people would be comfortable buying online.
• The saddest story of the year.
• Finally an SAP Cloud story that doesn't mention BI On Demand.
• Easiest way to earn a link here? Mention beer.
• See.
• This list of horror stories probably should have come out at Halloween.
• It wouldn't really be evangelizing if they were already on board, no?

Hope you don't mind us regifting you last year's holiday greetings. We've all got day jobs, you know.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, David Gilbertson, Timo Elliott, Ethan Jewett, Pieter Hendrikx, Tom Wailgum, David Taylor, Laurie McCabe, Paul Clark, Chris Herbert, Chris Kanaracus, Thorsten Franz, Corey Adams, Kurt Bilafer, Tammy Powlas, 

Obviously our next Orlando tweetup is free, but if you want to attend the ASUG Annual Conference/SAPPHIRE event that's colocated with us on the cheap you could offer to speak.

Our shizzle

• Dallas spends a day looking at the Tableau menu without technically eating anything.

How-to Corner

• If you liked Ramp Up, you're gonna LOVE Customer Validation.
• BI training is vital. Counterpoint.
• Why don't we ever see Deski charts in these sorts of posts?
• Feel free to take a ride on the wild side - of Sybase's database offerings.

BI Talk

• Some unkind words regarding our new German fathers.
• Neil Raden, representin' the new skool.
• Big data adjectives not previously used? Delicious.

Enterprise What-Not

• 2012 - the year SAP embraced developers?
• Finally, a blueprint for scaling innovation.
• Looks like the online document wars are just about to get good.
• Congrats to our friends at RedMonk. Now stay the heck out of BI.

Big thanks to Jay and Greg for making the following possible.

Contributors in some form or fashion:Josh Fletcher, Greg Myers, Eric Vallo, Jamie Oswald, Dallas Marks, Clint Vosloo, Jon Reed, Ethan Jewett, Neil Raden, Dennis Howlett, Vijay Vijayasankar, James Governor, Franz Dill, Tom Raftery, Donald MacCormick, Timo Elliott, Steve Lucas, Jay Riddle,