Book Image

PowerPivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards

By : Robert Bosco J
Book Image

PowerPivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards

By: Robert Bosco J

Overview of this book

<p>Business intelligence technology gives an organization the power to make decisions using large volumes of data. By obtaining an adequate amount of data and integrating data from a variety of sources, a user can get a comprehensive knowledge of their business and business strategies. PowerPivot is a free add-in to the 2010 version of the spreadsheet application MS Excel. It extends the capabilities of the PivotTable data summarization and cross-tabulation feature with new features such as expanded data capacity, advanced calculations, the ability to import data from multiple sources, and the ability to publish workbooks as interactive web applications.</p> <p>PowerPivot for Advanced Reporting and Dashboards will teach you the fundamentals of PowerPivot as well as how to use the different data types available. This book also discusses useful tips and tricks for handling and resolving errors that might pop up while creating your report. With this book, you will be able to create relevant BI reports quickly and efficiently.</p> <p>Moving on from the basics, this book will explain the types of data sources that can be imported into PowerPivot. You will then delve into relationships, hierarchies, and data model creation using imported data. You will also learn how to employ DAX functions to transform unstructured data into structured data. Finally, this book will teach you how to create reports such as Pivot Tables, Pivot Charts, Slicers, KPIs, and Perspective reports using PowerPivot and how to publish them using the SharePoint server.</p>
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

List of data sources


Here, the wide varieties of data sources that are supported in the PowerPivot interface are given in brief. The vital part is to install providers such as OLE DB and ODBC that support the existing data source, because when installing the PowerPivot add-in, it will not install the provider too and some providers might already be installed with other applications.

For instance, if there is a SQL Server installed in the system, the OLE DB provider will be installed with the SQL Server, so that later on it wouldn't be necessary to install OLE DB while adding data sources by using the SQL Server as a data source. Hence, make sure to verify the provider before it is added as a data source.

Perhaps the provider is required only for relational database data sources.

Relational database

By using RDBMS, you can import tables and views into the PowerPivot workbook. The following is a list of various data sources:

  • Microsoft SQL Server

  • Microsoft SQL Azure

  • Microsoft SQL Server Parallel...