Now that SQL Server 2008 R2 is out, and Excel 2010 is out. You can get PowerPivot (http://powerpivot.com/) and create your own in memory cubes!
…. Or something like that.
I still haven’t figure out where PowerPivot fits in a business scenario. Why?
Well first you have what are now being called the “old school” BI users, that use Excel to connect to an SSAS cube and create fancy pivots and reports, maybe convert to formulas and create some nice reports/dashboards.. analytics.
Then you have people who only consume canned/standardized reports, through SSRS mostly, or maybe Excel Web Services… but they don’t create. Just consume.
You might even have power users, who take Report Builder and create those SSRS reports for other users. Awesome.
But then, you have this tool, PowerPivot. What can you do? Hit databases (mostly… cubes and other sources as well), bring back data, relate it, and create pivot reports/graphs off of it.
But you better be pretty dang advanced as a business user to use PowerPivot. I could count on one hand the users (that I have dealt with over the last 10 years) I would feel comfortable giving it to and not ending up with more of a headache.
What do I think is still missing from the Microsoft BI toolset? Looking at Business Objects, the Web Intelligence. Universes. You create a Universe off of a datasource and expose it out to the user, they can create reports/ad-hoc whatever off of it.
Kind of like the ever elusive “Report Model” in the Microsoft stack that no one ever uses, ever will use, or has no reason to use. But in BO, they make it useful.
I don’t see PowerPivot taking the place of a Report Model/Universe, so where does it fit? IT Analysts making “pre” cubes before you actually make cubes for your users that just want to hit it with Excel and not care about anything else?
Or people who just want to create their own cubes in silos. Tell me how that lends itself to “one version of the truth”?
Either way, we will see how it evolves and hopefully find some good use for it. 🙂
Steve Novoselac's Blog 