Professional Microsoft® PowerPivot for Excel® and SharePoint®

Chapter 1. Self-Service Business Intelligence and Microsoft PowerPivot

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Reviewing SQL Server 2008 R2

• Understanding Self-Service Business Intelligence

• Getting to know PowerPivot

• Taking a look at PowerPivot applications

• Taking a look at PowerPivot for Excel

• Taking a look at PowerPivot for SharePoint

• Taking a look at the VertiPaq engine

PowerPivot is Microsoft's entry into the self-service business intelligence (BI) arena. PowerPivot was built with specific goals in mind, and this chapter will explain some of those goals. PowerPivot was also specifically designed not to address certain goals, and this chapter will also discuss those decisions as well. Some dependencies PowerPivot had on other groups and technologies (specifically, Microsoft Office, especially Excel and SharePoint) led to how it was designed and built. This chapter will explore those goals, dependencies, and decisions.

By the end of this chapter you will have a clear idea of the "what and why" of PowerPivot. Subsequent chapters will go into much greater detail on how to work with PowerPivot, and describe its features with the goal of helping you become a professional PowerPivot user who can get the most out of this innovative product.

SQL SERVER 2008 R2

PowerPivot is included in the R2 release of SQL Server 2008. The "R2" in the name might give you the impression that this release of SQL Server is a minor update to SQL Server 2008. If you thought that, you would be wrong. The 2008 R2 release includes major ...