We've shown that PowerPivot provides the ability to easily combine and analyze data from different sources. For example, if you have a third-party accounts receivable application that integrates into Dynamics GP, you can still analyze that detailed data against the information in Dynamics GP. PowerPivot supports all the usual suspects: Excel, Text, SQL Server, Oracle, ODBC connections, and so on. But it also supports a couple of unusual connections, specifically Atom feeds, Reporting Services Reports, and the Windows Azure Marketplace.
Atom feeds are best known for syndicating blog content. The Atom format is an alternative to the more widely used RSS format. However, Atom feeds can be used for other things. Microsoft refers to these as OData feeds in PowerPivot. OData is a format based on Atom, and for our purposes, they are used interchangeably.
Atom feeds, with data designed to be consumed by tools such as PowerPivot, are still pretty rare, but imagine...