This document provides an overview and summary of a presentation on leveraging PowerPivot. It begins with background on the speaker and their company Superior Consulting Services. It then outlines the session which will cover Microsoft Business Intelligence, what PowerPivot is, a comparison of SSAS and PowerPivot, a demonstration of DAX functions, and what future developments are planned. Audience polling questions are also included to gauge experience levels.

1. Leveraging PowerPivot
Dan English
Business Intelligence Consultant
Superior Consulting Services, LLC
denglish@teamscs.com

2. Speaker Background
Dan English
http://denglishbi.wordpress.com
• Developing with Microsoft technologies for over 14 years
• Over 7 years experience with Data Warehousing and Business
Intelligence
• Microsoft SQL Server MVP, Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP),
and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)
• Architect and develop dashboard solutions for enterprise reporting and
monitoring
• Experienced in ETL and Analysis Services development, requirements
gathering, and data modeling
• PASSMN 2009/2010 – Executive Board Chair (President)
• Microsoft MN BI User Group 2011 – Leadership Board
• Twitter – http://twitter.com/denglishbi
• Vimeo Videos - http://vimeo.com/user3952239/videos

3. SCS Background
• Founded in 1997, SCS is a technical consulting firm
focused exclusively on Microsoft technologies to
provide custom solutions
• Headquartered in Burnsville, MN
• Microsoft Gold Certified Partner since 2006
• Provide solutions in the areas of Business Intelligence,
Reporting, Application Development, Networking,
SharePoint, and Special Projects
• Industry recognized authorities via books, speaker
engagements, and direct assistance to Microsoft

4. Session Outline
• Microsoft Business Intelligence Overview
• What is PowerPivot?
• Comparison of SSAS (UDM) & PowerPivot
• Discuss DAX
• Demo
• What’s coming?
• Questions

5. Quick Audience Poll
 How many are currently using SSAS (UDM) in
production?
 How many have Excel 2010 deployed?
 How many are currently using PowerPivot? In
production? With SharePoint?
 How many are waiting until v2 of PowerPivot?

6. Microsoft’s BI Vision
Improving organizations by
providing business insights to
all employees leading to better,
faster, more relevant decisions
Complete and integrated
BI and Performance
Management offering
Agile products that adapt to
how you need the information
Built on a trusted part
of your IT backbone

7. Microsoft Business Intelligence Overview
Business User Experience •Self-Service access & insight
•Data exploration & analysis
•Predictive analysis
•Data visualization
•Contextual visualization
Business Collaboration Platform •Dashboards & Scorecards
•Excel Services
•Web based forms & workflow
•Collaboration
•Search
•Content Management
•LOB data integration
Data Infrastructure & BI Platform •Analysis Services
•Reporting Services
•Integration Services
•Master Data Services
•Data Mining
•Data Warehousing

8. What is PowerPivot?
PowerPivot for Excel is a free
download that significantly expands
the data analysis capabilities of Excel.
Excel 2010 (32-bit or 64-bit) is
required to install PowerPivot for
Excel.
PowerPivot supports files up to
2GB in size. The 64-bit version of
PowerPivot enables you to work
with up to 4GB of data in memory,
and the 32-bit version enables you
to work with up to 2GB of data in
memory (500 to 700MB files)
Office Shared Features must be installed with
Excel 2010. .NET Programmability Support, in
Microsoft Excel, must also be installed.

9. What can it do?
Microsoft
Microsoft Analysis
Text Files SQL Azure Services
IW Tool Relationships
Microsoft
Excel
Measures
DAX
ODBC / PivotCharts Agile
Reporting
OLEDB Teradata
Services
Microsoft
Team BI SQL Server
Data Slicers
Calculated
Bars ATOM
Columns Personal
datafeeds
Microsoft BI
PDW
Oracle Microsoft Azure
Microsoft
Access PowerPivot DataMarket
Self-
Sybase service Sparklines
PivotTables IBM DB2
Informix

10. What does it provide?
What you do get…
• VertiPaq engine (in-memory column store)
• External data connectivity
• DAX functions – Excel like with intellisense
• Excel user interface
• PivotTables and PivotCharts
What you don’t get…
• Dynamic user level security
• Hierarchy support, parentchild, unary operators*
• KPIs
• Attribute properties and cube actions
• Advanced calculation capabilities
• Perspectives
• Incremental data loads
• Robust Enterprise OLAP Solution
*There are workarounds with good DAX knowledge and model design

11. SSAS (UDM) vs. PowerPivot
SSAS (UDM) PowerPivot (v1)
Mature Product New Product
Scalable Personal / light weight
Massive data (TBs) Large data (GBs)
OLAP Engine VertiPaq Engine
Data Source View PowerPivot Window w/ data
Dimensions & Facts Tables
Measures Measures
Indexes / Aggregations No Indexes / Aggregations
Actions (drillthrough, report) No actions
Perspectives No perspectives
Translations No translations
Cube browser Excel for browsing

12. Loading Comparison
Analysis Services (UDM) PowerPivot
Source Data mart OLAP Source
Data Engine VertiPaq
Data
Engine

13. What can PowerPivot build?

14. Data Analysis Expressions (DAX)
Calculated Columns
• Concatenate values
• Create new values
• Perform lookups
• Examples
• Month =CONCATENATE(FORMAT(MONTH([Datekey]),"00 "),LEFT([CalendarMonthLabel],3))
• Profit =[SalesAmount]-[TotalCost]-[ReturnAmount]
• ProductCategory =RELATED(DimProductCategory[ProductCategoryName])
• LifetimeSales =SUMX(RELATEDTABLE(FactSales), FactSales[SalesAmount])

15. Data Analysis Expressions (DAX)
Measures
SalesAmount =
SUM('FactSales'[SalesAmount])
YTDSales =
TOTALYTD(SUM(FactSales[SalesAmount]),DimDate[Datekey])
PY YTD Sales =
TOTALYTD(SUM(FactSales[SalesAmount]), DATEADD(DimDate[Datekey],-12,MONTH))
CumulativeSales =
CALCULATE(SUM(FactSales[SalesAmount]),
DATESBETWEEN(DimDate[Datekey],
FIRSTDATE(ALL(DimDate[Datekey])),
LASTDATE(DimDate[Datekey])))
http://denglishbi.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/calculating-cumulative-values-in-microsoft-bi-tools/
Profit % = Sum([Profit])/Sum([SalesAmount])

16. Data Analysis Expressions (DAX)
Retail 454 Calendar Calculation
PY_SalesAmount =
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Year])) = 1,
CALCULATE([Sum of SalesAmount], DATESBETWEEN(DimRetailDate[PK_Date],
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Quarter_Of_Year])) = 1,
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Month_Of_Year])) = 1,
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Week_Of_Year]))=1,
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Day_Of_Year]))=1,
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Date]),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Week_Start_Date])),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Month_Start_Date])),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Quarter_Start_Date])),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Year_Start_Date])),
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Quarter_Of_Year])) = 1,
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Month_Of_Year])) = 1,
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Week_Of_Year]))=1,
IF(COUNTROWS(VALUES(DimRetailDate[Reporting_Day_Of_Year]))=1,
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Date]),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Week_End_Date])),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Month_End_Date])),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Quarter_End_Date])),
FIRSTDATE(DimRetailDate[PY_Reporting_Year_End_Date]))))
,BLANK())
http://denglishbi.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/round-2-calculating-previous-year-marketing-calendar-values-with-dax/

17. Demo
POWERPIVOT

18. PowerPivot Demo Screenshot

19. Self-service analysis
Work with massive
delivered thru Excel
amounts of data
2010

20. PowerPivot Monitoring
Central Administration
• Server Health
• Avg Instance CPU
• Avg Instance Memory
• Query Response Time
• Activity
• Performance
• Historical Utilization
• Users vs Queries
• Usage monitoring
• # of Users
• # of Queries
• Size of workbook

21. What’s coming?
SQL Server 11 ‘Denali’
• PowerPivot v2 add-in
• Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM)
• Visual Studio 2010
• Corporate / Enterprise BI solution
• Source control integration
• DAX additions – like rank, distinctcount, and
hierarchy support
• KPIs – value, target, status
• Partitioning
• Role-based security
• Perspectives
• Project ‘Crescent’ – Silverlight reporting
• Column store index -> relational database

22. How do you choose?
Situation Option
Existing SSAS (UDM) corporate BI solution SSAS (UDM)
POC or test out data model change PowerPivot
End users building and deploying solutions PowerPivot
New BI solution Consider PowerPivot/BISM
Doesn’t fit in memory
Scalability
UDM
VertiPaq
Fits in memory
Static Reporting Ad-hoc Analysis Advanced Calcs
Richness

23. Analysis Services Summary
Corporate – solution
Team – rich solution created for
Personal – simple
created by user for organization with
solution created by
team / department centralized logic and
user only for user.
deployed to server. data which is
scalable.
Empower Align
PowerPivot for Excel PowerPivot for SharePoint SSAS - UDM / BISM

24. Resources
• Microsoft BI Sites - http://www.microsoft.com/bi/ AND http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/default.aspx
• PowerPivot - http://www.powerpivot.com
• PowerPivot for Excel (Business Intelligence) Portal - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/ff604673.aspx
• PowerPivot Info (Vidas Matelis) - http://www.powerpivot-info.com
• PowerPivot Pro (Rob Collie) - http://www.powerpivotpro.com
• PowerPivot Geek (Dave Wickert) - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb671432.aspx
• Alberto Ferrari & Marco Russo - http://sqlblog.com/blogs/marco_russo AND
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/alberto_ferrari
• Kasper de Jonge - http://www.powerpivotblog.nl/

25. QUESTIONS

26. THANK YOU!
INFO@TEAMSCS.COM