Download Why PowerPivot? - ProDataMan

SharePoint 2010
Business Intelligence
Module 9: PowerPivot
Overview
PowerPivot For Excel
PowerPivot For SharePoint
Lesson: PowerPivot For Excel
PowerPivot Introduction
PowerPivot and Excel
PowerPivot Features
PowerPivot Functions
VertiPaq Engine
Where are my rows?
SQL Azure
CodePlex Projects
PowerPivot versus SSAS
PowerPivot Introduction
Microsoft's PowerPivot for Excel 2010 is a data analysis
tool for business users that delivers unmatched
computational power directly within Excel 2010
Why Excel?
 Excel is an easy and known tool to all business users
Why PowerPivot?
 Creating and Building Cubes with Analysis Services is
complex and over kill for many organizations
NOTE: PowerPivot creation and modification works in
Excel 2010 only!
 Requires Enterprise SKU of SharePoint
PowerPivot & Excel
PowerPivot extends Excel
 Excel is the most popular tool for business users
 Allows users to manage data and make decisions (If IT
can’t provide the tools, Excel is used)
 There are both 32bit and 64bit versions, must match your
installed Office 2010 version
PowerPivot improves Excel and End users by
 Increasing efficiencies
 Powerful toolset of functions
Power Pivot Features
Data Analysis Expressions (DAX)
 Express BI logic based on Excel formula syntax with added functionality
 Calculated Columns (cleanse and extend)
 PivotTable Measures (advanced analysis)
Tools for working with Data Sources
 Table Import Wizard (html tables, other tabular data)
 Join disparate data into composite data sources (local text file with remote
database, two separate data warehouses)
 Data Feeds (SharePoint 2010 REST, ATOM)
 You can also copy and paste into the current in-memory data!
Data/Column-based compression
 Load large data sets into memory and process in seconds
Bring Slicing and Dicing to Excel
 Use to only exist in tools like Analysis Services (OLAP) when using large
datasets
PowerPivot DAX Functions
PowerPivot has many different categories of functions:
 Date and Time (EOMonth, Weekday)
 Filter and Value (Calculate, All)
 Logical (true, false)
 Math and Trig
 Statistical (CountRows, SumX)
 Text
 Time Intelligence (StartOfMonth, EndOfMonth)
 Information (IsError)
VertiPaq Engine
Wait, you can load “millions” of rows in Excel? What?
 Yep, using the VertiPaq engine, you can download and compress
millions of rows of data into Excel
What is VertiPaq?
 An SSAS implementation
AMO and ADOMD.NET are used to interface with VertiPaq
 Means that traditional MDX and XMLA can be used to query the
multidimensional data generated
Everything runs in-proc to Excel (best performance on 64bit client)
 If one crashes, all crashes
 Limited to the memory of the machine
Most data you are crunching should have been already preprocessed at some level
 Alleviate some of the work from the client machine
Where are my rows?
When you pull down 100’s of millions of rows where does the data go?
 Answer: Memory
In-Memory BI (IMBI) is a database storage technique used by
PowerPivot
 Common pattern used in large scale transaction systems
 Allows for no-disk I/O, quick data scans and compression of data
 Column striping versus Row striping
When saving the data, it goes into the workbook (zip file)
 \customXml\item1.data
 For caching purposes, some resides in the %temp%\VertiPaq_<GUID>
folder before save
Note: SharePoint has a 2GB File limit, variable compression ratio means
what runs in PowerPivot might not save in SharePoint!
 Depending on your dataset, your compression will vary (15x), the more
data, the better the compression
SQL Azure Support
One of the data sources supported with PowerPivot is
SQL Azure
SQL Azure is a database server in the cloud
 Just a simple SQL Server hosted somewhere else that
will have (at some point) guaranteed uptime and
performance features
As of today, the following is not supported in the Cloud
 Analysis Services
 Reporting Services
 Replication
 Service Broker
Avoiding PowerPivot PowerPitfalls
PowerPivot is no doubt easy and powerful, however, be
sure to Plan!
 Training your PowerPivot users
DAX, Best Practices (single workbook vs multiple)
 Cooperation between business units and IT
Plan for power user access to data (data feeds) and support
 Planning your PowerPivot for SharePoint deployment(s)
Dept, Enterprise
 PowerPivot requires Office 2010
You have to plan another rollout of Office
 You still need highly experienced BI Consultants!
PowerPivot Resources
Several helpful resources for PowerPivot exist
 PowerPivotpro.com
 PowerPivotTwins.com
CodePlex has a PowerPivot Sample Data project
 http://powerpivotsampledata.codeplex.com
 Data rich access databases that you can “play” with
Lesson: PowerPivot For SharePoint
Traditional Excel Issues
Why Excel And SharePoint?
Features
Management
Traditional Excel Problems
Emailing the data
 Leaves the company, can cause Inbox problems (160MB
reports)
Ensuring correct versions are published to recipients
Keeping the report up to date (changing data and
requirements)
Report author is out for a week the report is due, what
happens?
Why Excel and SharePoint?
Share and Collaborate
 Put in document library, not in email
Publish your Excel reports to SharePoint
 In place, scheduled data refreshes
Manage security with SharePoint
 If they don’t have at least view permission, they will never
know it exists!
PowerPivot, Excel and SharePoint, Oh My!
Combining all three technologies presents giant leap
forward in the world of Business Intelligence
 SharePoint provides the Security and Management
 Excel provides the simple and easy user interface
 PowerPivot provides the data analytics engine
PowerPivot for SharePoint Features
Tight integration with SharePoint through Solutions and
Features
 PowerPivot Gallery – Rich preview features
 View Only Permissions allow interaction without modification
 Set of custom actions added to Central Administration for
management
Unattended Data Refresh
 PowerPivot data sources can be refreshed based on your
custom schedule
Highly informative charts and reports provide information on
usage
 Utilize built in reports to track usage
 Discover mission-critical applications
PowerPivot for SharePoint Installation
Install is done through the SQL Server 2008 R2 installer
package
 Installer can create a new SharePoint Farm or add
support for an existing Farm
 Installation is MUCH simpler using the SQL Installer to
create a NEW farm
PP4S requires a VertiPaq Analysis Services database
instance
 If you have installed the full Analysis Services you will
need to create another instance that is in VertiPaq mode
 ASOMD.NET 10.50.xxxx
PowerPivot for SharePoint Components
Components include:
 SharePoint Service
 SharePoint Service Application
 Solutions and Features
Dashboards, web parts, content types and list templates (PowerPivot
Gallery and Data Feed Library)
 Application Database for configuration, schedule information
for data refresh
 Timer Jobs
Removes cached data files on the servers if workbooks are deleted or
modified
 PowerPivot Web Service and managed extension
Handles requests between clients and PowerPivot for SharePoint
PowerPivot and Reporting Services
Exciting things happen when both are installed together
 A report can be used as a data source in PowerPivot
 New reports can be created from PowerPivot workbooks
Requires SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services
Programmatic Interfaces
AMO
 Analysis management objects allows you to query the
properties and structures of PowerPivot workbook in the
farm
 You can query, but you cannot create or modify AS
objects. Only Excel 2010 can be used to modify
PowerPivot workbooks
Data Storage Requirements
PowerPivot workbooks will be stored in SharePoint
 Workbooks contain their data (remember our
compression ratio)? These workbooks can get very large
 SharePoint officially can only hold 2GB files (even with
RBS)
 Versioning enabled on a PowerPivot document library
could pose significant storage issues
Server versus Client Processing
SharePoint 2010 is 64bit
 PowerPivot workbooks that are created in a 64bit
environment with a correspondingly high amount of
memory will work great on a similar environments
Clients are not a server
 Clients that try to tackle a workbook that has lots of data
may not be successful (lack memory and processor
capabilities of a server)
 Evaluate the client infrastructure and ensure all users can
take advantage of your PowerPivot workbooks
If working with more than 1 Million rows, you should be 64bit client
PowerPivot Monitoring
Server Status
 CPU and Memory Utilization
 System Capacity and Performance
 Workbook and User Activity over Time
Quality of Service
 Query Response Times
 Current Server State
 Largest and Most Popular Solutions
Solution Statistics and Monitoring
 Document Information and Data Sources
 Activity and Top Users
 Query Performance per Workbook
Lab 1: Power Pivot
Install PowerPivot for Excel
Install PowerPivot for SharePoint
2010
Lab 2: Use Power Pivot
Create PowerPivot Workbooks
Configure PowerPivot for SharePoint
Upload PowerPivot Workbooks to
SharePoint
Review
Your instructor will ask a series of
questions on this module
Summary
PowerPivot is a powerful extension to Excel
Various new functions and tools give Excel true BI
capabilities