Professional Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint
With PowerPivot, Microsoft brings the power of Microsoft's
business intelligence tools to Excel and SharePoint users.
Self-service business intelligence today augments traditional BI
methods, allowing faster response time and greater flexibility. If
you're a business decision-maker who uses Microsoft Office or
an IT professional responsible for deploying and managing your
organization's business intelligence systems, this guide will
help you make the most of PowerPivot. Professional Microsoft
PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint describes all aspects of
PowerPivot and shows you how to use each of its major features. By
the time you are finished with this book, you will be well on your
way to becoming a PowerPivot expert. This book is for people who
want to learn about PowerPivot from end to end. You should have
some rudimentary knowledge of databases and data analysis.
Familiarity with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft SharePoint is
helpful, since PowerPivot builds on those two products. This book
covers the first version of PowerPivot, which ships with SQL Server
2008 R2 and enhances Microsoft Office 2010. It provides an overview
of PowerPivot and a detailed look its two components: PowerPivot
for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint. It explains the
technologies that make up these two components, and gives some
insight into why these components were implemented the way they
were. Through an extended example, it shows how to build a
PowerPivot application from end to end. The companion Web site
includes all the sample applications and reports discussed. What
This Book Covers After discussing self-service BI and the
motivation for creating PowerPivot, the book presents a quick,
end-to-end tutorial showing how to create and publish a simple
PowerPivot application. It then drilsl into the features of
PowerPivot for Excel in detail and, in the process, builds a more
complex PowerPivot application based on a real-world case study.
Finally, it discusses the server side of PowerPivot (PowerPivot for
SharePoint) and provides detailed information about its
installation and maintenance. Chapter 1, "Self-Service
Business Intelligence and Microsoft PowerPivot," begins Part I
of the book. This chapter describes self-service BI and introduces
PowerPivot, Microsoft's first self-service BI tool. It provides
a high-level look at the two components that make up PowerPivot -
PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint. Chapter 2,
"A First Look at PowerPivot," walks you through a simple
example of creating a PowerPivot application from end to end. In
the process, it shows how to set up the two components of
PowerPivot, and describes the normal workflow of creating a simple
PowerPivot application. Chapter 3, "Assembling Data,"
starts off Part II of the book, and explains how to bring data into
PowerPivot from various external data sources. It also introduces
the extended example that you will build in this and subsequent
chapters. Chapter 4, "Enriching Data," shows how to
enhance the data you brought into your application by creating
relationships and using PowerPivot's expression language, Data
Analysis Expressions (DAX). Chapter 5, "Self-Service
Analysis," describes how to use your PowerPivot data with
various Excel features, such as PivotTables, PivotCharts, and
slicers to do analysis. Chapter 5 also delves further into DAX,
showing how to create and use DAX measures. Chapter 6,
"Self-Service Reporting," shows how to publish your
PowerPivot workbook to the server side of PowerPivot (PowerPivot
for SharePoint), and make use of its features to view and update
PowerPivot reports. It also shows how to use the data in a
PowerPivot workbook as a data source for reports created in other
tools such as Report Builder 3.0 and Excel. Chapter 7,
"Preparing for SharePoint 2010," is the first chapter in
Part III of the book. It describes the components of SharePoint
2010 that are relevant for PowerPivot, and looks at how PowerPivot
for SharePoint interacts with those components. Chapter 8,
"PowerPivot for SharePoint Setup and Configuration,"
provides instructions on how to set up and configure a
multi-machine SharePoint farm that contains PowerPivot for
SharePoint. Chapter 9, "Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and
Securing PowerPivot Services," gives tips on how to
troubleshoot PowerPivot for SharePoint issues. It also shows how to
monitor the health of your PowerPivot for SharePoint environment,
and discusses relevant security issues. Chapter 10, "Diving
into the PowerPivot Architecture," describes at a deeper level
the architecture of PowerPivot, both client and server. It also
explains the Windows Identity Foundation and discusses the use of
Kerberos in the context of PowerPivot for SharePoint. Chapter 11,
"Enterprise Considerations," talks about common
PowerPivot for SharePoint enterprise considerations: capacity
planning, optimizing the environment, upgrade considerations, and
uploading performance. Appendix A provides instructions for setting
up the data sources that are used to build the SDR Healthcare
extended example in Chapters 3 through 6. Additionally, two
"bonus" elements are available online at this book's
companion Web site: * Appendix B is a comprehensive DAX reference
that describes all the DAX functions and provides code snippets
that show how to use them. * A special chapter describes real-world
scenarios in which PowerPivot is used to solve common problems.
SQL Server "Gemini" brings the power of Microsoft's
business intelligence tools to the desktop Self-service business
intelligence today augments traditional BI methods, allowing faster
response time and greater flexibility. If you're a business
decision-maker who uses Microsoft Office or an IT professional
responsible for deploying and managing your organization's
business intelligence systems, this guide will help you make the
most of SQL Server 2008 "Gemini".
Featuring insights and tips from the team that built the product,
it offers a head start on mastering the features of
"Gemini". The companion Web site includes all the sample
applications and reports discussed.
- "Gemini" brings the power of Microsoft's business
intelligence tools to Microsoft Office 2010
- This book uses the insight of the team that built the product to
give business decision-makers and IT professionals the fast track
to getting the most from the new technology
- Covers in-memory BI server technology, the Data Analytics
eXpressions (DAX) language, Report Gallery, and automatic data
updates from sources including SharePoint lists and Google
Docs
- Walks you through examples that show how to leverage the power of
self-service business intelligence
You'll learn to use Gemini with Excel and SharePoint to improve
your business intelligence system.
Sivakumar Harinath is a Senior Test Manager on the SQL Server Analysis Services team and a coauthor of Professional Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 with MDX. Ron Pihlgren is a 15-year Microsoft veteran and member of the SQL Server Analysis Services team as a senior test manager. Denny Guang-Yeu Lee is a member of the SQL Customer Advisory team and a coauthor of Professional Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 with MDX.
Inhaltsangabe
Introduction. Part I: Introduction. Chapter 1 Self-Service Business Intelligence and Microsoft PowerPivot. Chapter 2 A First Look at PowerPivot. Part I: Creating Self-Service Bi Applications Using PowerPivot. Chapter 3 Assembling Data. Chapter 4 Enriching Data. Chapter 5 Self-Service Analysis. Chapter 6 Self-Service Reporting. Part II: IT Professional. Chapter 7 Preparing for SharePoint 2010. Chapter 8 PowerPivot for SharePoint Setup and Configuration. Chapter 9 Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and Securing PowerPivot Services. chaPter 10 Diving into the PowerPivot Architecture. Chapter 11 Enterprise Considerations. Part IV: Appendix. Appendix A: Setting Up the SDR Healthcare Application. Appendix B: DAX Reference. Index.
