Microsoft PowerPivot

As it is possible to see from the name, PowerPivot is PivotTable "on steroids". PowerPivot allows to enter into Excel a huge array of information from different databases, spreadsheets and other sources and almost instantly to sort and filter it. Data can be reorganized on one of columns and to compare to columns from other sources. It is possible to organize information on time, geographical origin or some other parameter. As PowerPivot uses server tools of a business intelligence of Microsoft, the new superstructure for Excel maintains the majority of functions of full-fledged BI-applications.

At this PowerPivot works with speed, amazing for spreadsheets. System architecture is in many respects technology similar to DBMS entirely performed in memory that allows to sort millions of lines for only several seconds.

The best in PowerPivot the fact that the superstructure without any mezzanine board is delivered together with Microsoft Office 2010 (the truth fully to use its power, is required still to the Microsoft SQL Server). It means that advanced users of Excel in your organization will begin to experiment with PowerPivot sooner or later.

However potential danger disappears in this availability, some experts consider. The new tool is only capable to aggravate a problem which became aggravated in the last decade, having arisen mainly in view of popularity of Excel among business heads.

The organizations spent a lot of money and forces for creation of data warehouses and cleaning of information to receive what is called the term one version of the truth ("a uniform version of the truth", an unambiguous picture of a situation). However a problem of the majority of the professional BI systems that not all reports necessary for business heads are regularly provided in them. Therefore many users of Excel study production of any reports in spreadsheets that often leads to the phenomenon which received the ordinary name spreadmart (literally "a tabular market", the disorder arising because of accumulation in the organization of the spreadsheets created by different users at different times).

In reports which appear as a result of similar "amateur performance" outdated or wrong data are often used. At the same time reports quite often extend on the organization and rely on them without any check. That it is even worse, being made in Excel, similar reports often contain secrets of the company in the form of the formulas stored in cells of tables, marks out the Collie.

Many are afraid that PowerPivot, having given an opportunity of creation of reports of a bigger depth, will only worsen a situation with quality of analytics. However, if in the organization to introduce a number of rules and to implement certain technologies, PowerPivot can even reduce "a tabular disparate".

Let's tell, managers could publish the reports of PowerPivot created by them in SharePoint repository where others will be able to browse them. In this case reports can automatically be updated in process of change of data thanks to what the problem of distribution of outdated results will be fixed. Besides reports do not contain formulas in SharePoint.

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