Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Information consumers are the second community of casual users. They tend to explore the data
more than the information users, but they lack the expertise necessary to query a database directly.
They can get the information they need by working with interactive reports that include parameters
for filtering and sorting or those that include options to change the visibility of selected report ele-
ments. Interactive reports can also include the ability to present more detailed information, either by
displaying the details in the same report or by opening a separate report. Again, Reporting Services
is a good choice for meeting the needs of this community. With a proper understanding of the needs
of information consumers, a report author can incorporate a variety of interactive features to satisfy
those needs. Interactivity in Reporting Services emphasizes navigation within a report and between
reports, which is useful but restricts the ability of information consumers to explore the data. If inter-
active exploration is preferable, Power View in Excel or Power View in SharePoint are good choices
because these tools make it possible for business users to easily filter data and change visualizations
on demand. Another option is to deploy PowerPivot workbooks to SharePoint, with which users can
filter, slice, and sort model-based pivot tables and pivot charts in the browser.
At the top of the pyramid, power analysts are the smallest community. Power analysts might use
existing reports as a starting point for analysis, but they also need the ability to define and execute
their own queries. In some cases, they might even build reports for the other communities. For
example, a power user can use Report Builder to create a report based on their own queries and then
publish the entire report (or even individual elements of the report, called
report parts
) for the other
user communities to access. Information consumers can build up a customized report from these
report parts without knowing anything about how to construct a query or how to design the report
part.
As flexible as Reporting Services is when you install it as a native mode report server, its report
definition language (RDL) files have limited support for the type of ad hoc analysis that power ana-
lysts frequently perform. A more commonly used tool for analysis is Microsoft Excel 2013. A power
analyst can group and filter data in a pivot table and create additional calculations to supplement
analysis of the data and publish the workbook to SharePoint for others to view by using Excel Ser-
vices. If analysis requires integrating data from multiple data sources, the power analyst can create a
data model in Excel and add Power View sheets for displaying the data model as charts, maps, and
other types of interactive visualizations. Furthermore, if the model requires more advanced calcula-
tions and modeling operations, the power analyst can use PowerPivot in Excel to enhance the model
and use a pivot table to display the data or use the model as a source for Power View in Excel. To
share the results of analysis as a report, the power analyst can then publish a workbook with Power
View or PowerPivot sheets to SharePoint Server 2013.
Organizational hierarchy
The position of a business user within the organizational hierarchy and the decision-making associ-
ated with that role often are a factor in the type of information and the BI tool that the user requires.
The higher the business user is in the hierarchy, the more likely that the user is an information con-
sumer, as described in the preceding section. Furthermore, the higher in the hierarchy a user is, the
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