Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Ease of Development
rEPorTING TooL
PrEDEFINED CHArT TyPE
EASE oF DEVELoPMENT
Excel
Yes
PerformancePoint
No
Power View
Yes
Reporting Services
No
Silverlight/HTML5
N/A
Tool CHoICeS wITH eXAMPleS
Ad hoc analysis is an area where the Microsoft tools diverge quite sharply.
Reporting Services is not designed for this at all, and PerformancePoint shines
on guided analysis. Excel, including PowerPivot and Power View, is truly the
best tool for unguided analysis and data discovery.
PErForMANCEPoINT: ANALyTIC CHArTS
PerformancePoint is great for guided analysis when known conditions are
exceeded or not met, for instance when a particular store does not meet a
sales target, or an item is overstocked and some further analysis is required.
The ability to drill down to the particular store and then do an analysis on
how many salespeople are allocated to that store or break down the stores
sales by product is one of the key strengths of PerformancePoint. Figure 13-8
shows an analytic chart that drills across to the UK sales figures and drills down
to the months for 2007.
Right-clicking October 2007 brings up a context menu that enables us to do
a Decomposition Tree and determine what figures make up that low sales
figure in October. As you can see in Figure 13-9, a large amount of additional
information can be gleaned from the Decomposition Tree.
