Database Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 5
Excel and PowerPivot
This chapter is about the two most frequently used tools in a power users'
arsenal for working with and visualizing data. It will review Excel and PowerPivot
and discuss important use cases for leveraging them in your quest to for
visualizing your data. They are the best tools to gather data and then begin
visualizing and analyzing data quickly. This is the foundation for many of the
types of visualizations you'll be doing in the rest of the topic, so it's important
to be familiar with them.
wHAT ARe eXCel AnD PoweRPIVoT?
Excel and PowerPivot are easy-to-use, very intuitive programs that work
together to create a powerful set of tools and capabilities for the end user.
Excel came first in the 1990s, with PowerPivot following as part of SQL Server
2008 R2's release cycle to deliver powerful data volume enhancements through
a column store engine.
PowerPivot
PowerPivot is avail-
able as an add-in
for all editions of
Excel 2010. As of the
writing of this topic,
while PowerPivot is
built into Excel 2013,
the advanced edit
functionality was
only included in Excel
2013 Professional Plus
(not to be confused
with Excel 2013
Professional).
Calling Excel a spreadsheet application seems so 1990s because it has grown
so much, but its foundation is still the top data analysis tool in the world.
More on this in the “What Does Excel Do for Me?” section later in this chapter.
PowerPivot is a free add-in for Excel that provides capabilities far beyond what
traditional Excel could even deliver, including more Analysis Services-style
functionality (online analytical processing (OLAP)) tools directly in Excel and
accessible by the end user.
PoWErPIVoT VErSuS BISM VErSuS ANALySIS SErVICES
When you work with PowerPivot, you will notice that there are several
names for this technology as new editions of the software it is part of with
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