Category Archives: Excel

Geoflow Preview for Excel 2013

Posted on April 16, 2013 by

Last week at the PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago, Microsoft disclosed a public preview of GeoFlow for Excel (download).  GeoFlow” is a 3D visualization tool for mapping, exploring and interacting with both geographic and chronological data, providing users with a new … Continue reading →

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Microsoft BI tools: How they use data sources

Posted on April 2, 2013 by

A quick list of how each of these Microsoft BI tools handles the two data sources “SQL Server” (relational-based) and “Analysis Services” (multidimensional-based): Report Builder – Using “SQL Server”, auto-detects joins if source system has foreign-key relationships (by selected “Auto … Continue reading →

Posted in Excel, PerformancePoint, Power View/Project Crescent, PowerPivot, Report Builder, SQLServerPedia Syndication, SSRS | 1 Comment

Microsoft Data Explorer

Posted on March 5, 2013 by

Data Explorer (download), which I first mentioned in my blog about PASS Summit 2011 (SQL Server 2012 and other PASS announcements), has finally taken the next step and is now a public preview. Think of Data Explorer as a self-service ETL … Continue reading →

Posted in Excel, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Comment

Excel 2013 and BI

Posted on August 15, 2012 by

On July 16, 2012, Office 2013 Preview was released to the public (download).  Excel 2013 now includes a lot of the SQL Server BI components directly in the initial install, as well as enhancements made to the business intelligence (BI) capabilities … Continue reading →

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End-User Microsoft BI Tools – Clearing up the confusion

Posted on February 27, 2012 by

Given two types of underlying data sources (a data warehouse and a OLAP cube built from the data warehouse) there are many different possible presentation layers (client tools) that serve different user communities with varying usage profiles.  There is a … Continue reading →

Posted in Excel, PerformancePoint, Power View/Project Crescent, PowerPivot, ProClarity, Report Builder, SQLServerPedia Syndication, SSRS, White Paper | 2 Comments