TM1 Forum

Hi,

I'm just wondering whether there's any TM1 book out there, either free or not and either soft or hard copy?
I know that Alan Kirk has mentioned here that there's no such book, but it's 2 years ago.

I also know that the official documentations / guides from IBM are nice, but I'd like to have a book with more examples and nicely arranged based on the difficulties of the topics, from beginner to advanced topics.

Many people have probably thought about it. But the time and effort to write such a manuscript is immense and the market of interested readers prepared to pay a reasonable amount for it is small.

If you could convince me that the market is big enough I might give it a second thought!

Well, I think it really depends on the quality of the book itself. As long as the book's really worth it, then there's no problem with high price I think (not very high, but maybe a bit above average ). The reason is because the book will be used mostly by corporates, and the expense for by buying books won't be considered too much, IMO.

As for the market, maybe the market can grow once there's a good book out there?

Do you really need a book or will simple online resources help enough?

Theres:

• the TM1 Cookbook by BIHints which can be very handy for beginners.
  TM1Tutorials.com which is my site.
  Wim Gielis' Site: http://www.wimgielis.be/

All of these are free TM1/Cognos Express resources.

comma wrote:Well, I think it really depends on the quality of the book itself. As long as the book's really worth it, then there's no problem with high price I think (not very high, but maybe a bit above average ). The reason is because the book will be used mostly by corporates, and the expense for by buying books won't be considered too much, IMO.

As for the market, maybe the market can grow once there's a good book out there?

Unfortunately there's more to it than that. The Admins had a back room discussion tossing around the idea of writing one a while back. However there are issues with finding a publisher (not as easy as just rocking up to an established one and saying "Hey, we've got a book on TM1!"; they'll only take a project on if they think they can make a buck out of it), with deciding on which version or versions you cover (especially given that some of the changes in 9.4/9.5 have been rather radical (sandboxes, contributor, etc); had we written one on 9.4 it would already be obsolete), with the multiple competing solutions to any given problem, with the scope of subjects that you cover (or don't), and not last and least... with getting a reasonable amount of compensation for the time and effort, which is a lot more than just pounding out the words on a one off basis.

Oh, and the question of whether there would be contractual issues with IBM/Cognos in incorporating screenshots from their software into a commercial product like a book.

Books on software like MS Office or even most Adobe products have a potential market which is large enough to justify that. (Though even then you'll be hard pressed to find books on their smaller products like say Captivate or Soundbooth.) But the work/reward ratio doesn't really scan for a TM1 book, unless it's done like the Microsoft Press ones where the cost is to some extent subsidised by the software makers. In other words, Cognos could shell out to produce a TM1 book to try to boost the market (I doubt it would be justifiable (profit-wise) on a stand-alone basis), but I'd be surprised if you see a third party TM1 book.