I just used this book for training last week, it's truly outstanding in the BO training space. I strongly disagree with C Townsend - this training covers everything from beginning to advanced Business Objects topics. I've taught Business Objects' own advanced training classes, and this book covers topics that aren't even mentioned in BO's training materials.

One big benefit of this book is that it includes resource files that can be used for training. The combination of a PowerPoint Presentation, BO Universe, BO Report Files, and Access Database give you just about everything you need to conduct a training class. All you need is a licensed copy of the software, and someone to teach the class. When you consider the price point, this book is a training bargain.

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn Business Objects Reporter, or anyone looking to conduct Business Objects Reporter training.

I am a Database developer and I work as a consultant for an International Company. Robert, the author of this course, has been training this company for almost a year. He has trained them virtually through Placeware and on-site at various locations. He has trained 100's of people and everyone that I speak to is greatly satisfied with this training manual. They say that it is very easy to comprehend. They also say that even though they have only been using Business Objects for a short time, it has helped them to create advanced reports that they previously thought impossible.

I have also had the occasion to meet Robert on his training visits. He is one of the most sincere people that I have ever met. He really seems concerned that the students understand his training manual and they are really able to advance their skills through it. On his last visit, he actually gave me one of each of his manuals. I have worked through this manual (Business Objects: Complete Report Writing Course) and now I know why his students are so happy.

He has a way of introducing complex topics and making them seem so easy. For example, he introduced subqueries after talking about combination queries. Since combination queries deal with simple data sets, they were easy to understand. Later, he showed how to use subqueries to reach the same solutions and even improve upon them.

He also talked about contexts in reports and how to use operators to work with these contexts to summarize information in a table. While working with these operators, I created several powerful reports that I can adapt here at our company.

Speaking about example reports, the course had many exercises that helped me to understand most of the topics. These reports showed me many different ways to present to same data to focus on different information in a report. For example, one report may show the average sales per month, while another showed the normalization of sales across several different portfolios.

Robert, it is a pleasure knowing you and a pleasure to write this review. It is one of the truest things that I have ever done.

I've used this book for the last three months on a project for work. I didn't know anything about Business Objects other than how to retrieve and refresh reports. This book gave me a great foundation to learn the fundamentals of BO reporting and the best use of the Business Objects tool.