Loading External Data into Power Pivot - Microsoft Business Intelligence Tools for Excel Analysts - page 77

2. On the Provider tab, select the appropriate driver for your database system.

3. Enter all the information needed on the Connection, Advanced, and All tabs.

4. When you're done, click OK to get back to the Table Import Wizard, where you see the con-
nection string input box populated with the connection string needed to connect to your
database system (see Figure 4-14).

Figure 4-14: Use the options on the Data Link Properties dialog box to automatically build the syntax
for your connection string.

From this point, the process is virtually identical to importing SQL Server data.

To connect to any database system, you must have that system's drivers installed on
your PC. SQL Server and Access are Microsoft, whose drivers are virtually guaranteed to
be installed on most machines you'll encounter. The drivers for other database systems,
however, need to be installed. This is typically done by the IT department, either at the
time the machine is loaded with corporate software or upon demand. If you don't see
the needed drivers for your database system, contact your IT department.

Note

Loading Data from Flat Files
The term flat file refers to a file that contains some form of tabular data without any sort of structural
hierarchy or relationship between records. The most common types of flat files are Excel files and text
files. A ton of important data is maintained in flat files. In this section, you discover how to import
these flat file data sources into the Power Pivot Data Model.