Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Consuming HDInsight from
Self-Service BI Tools
Self-service (Business Intelligence) BI is the talk of the town at the moment. As the term suggests, self-service BI is a
concept through which you can perform basic data analysis and extract intelligence out of that data with easy-to-use
tools, without needing to hire a suite of BI experts or implement a data warehouse solution. Self-service BI is certainly
a trend toward the consumerization of IT and BI. The trend is that an individual or even a really small-scale and
growing company can afford BI to implement a better decision-making process. This chapter will focus on the various
self-service BI tools available from Microsoft that provide strong integration with HDInsight and help in the following
analytics and reporting processes:
•
PowerPivot
•
Power View
•
Power BI
PowerPivot Enhancements
With SQL Server 2012, Microsoft has enhanced the data-analysis capabilities of PowerPivot for both the client-side
component (PowerPivot for Excel) and the server-side component (PowerPivot for SharePoint) to provide enhanced
self-service BI functionality to all Microsoft Office users. The new enhancements in PowerPivot help users integrate
data from multiple sources more easily, create reports and analytical applications faster, and share and collaborate on
insights more easily using the familiar environments of Excel and SharePoint.
PowerPivot comes as an add-in to Excel 2013 and Excel 2010 that allows business users to work with data from
any source and syndication, including Open Data Protocol (ODATA) feeds, to create business models and integrate
large amounts of data directly into Excel workbooks. Sophisticated workbooks can be built using Excel only, or using
the PowerPivot model as a source of data from other BI tools. These BI tools can include third-party tools as well as
the new Power View capability (discussed later in this chapter) to generate intelligent and interactive reports. These
reports can be published to SharePoint Server and then shared easily across an organization.
The following section explains how to generate a PowerPivot data model based on the
stock_analysis
Hive table
created earlier using the Microsoft Hive ODBC Driver. We have used Excel 2013 for the demos. Open a new Excel
worksheet, and make sure you turn on the required add-ins for Excel as shown in Figure
9-1
. You'll need those
add-ins enabled to build the samples used throughout this chapter. Go to
File
➤
Options
➤
Add-ins
. In the Manage
drop-down list, click
COM Add-ins
➤
Go
and enable the add-ins.
