The Arrival of PowerPivot ODS Solutions

Microsoft PowerPivot has without question arrived; although from an adoption perspective things are just beginning. Donald Farmer made this nice announcement regarding the PowerPivot client add-in surpassing a download landmark.

Now that PowerPivot is beginning its real-world adoption course questions are beginning to get raised around considerations. One such consideration is that of low-impact sourcing of source system data. Low-impact data sourcing is important for your organization's data repositories that service the business throughout the day. With technologies such as SSIS and Change Data Capture (CDC) we are able to build a downstream Operational Data Store (ODS) for PowerPivot consumption while minimizing impact to operational repositories.

A few links that might be of help:
-->Attunity, makers of the Stream Product Line supporting a wide range of enterprise data sources: www.attunity.com
-->MSDN SQL Server 2008 CDC Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb522489.aspx 
-->Slide deck for the webinar (PowerPivot Primer) I recently gave on PowerPivot Low-Impact & High-Performance Solutions: http://bivoyage.net/Resources/SlideDecks/tabid/824/Default.aspx

Also, a few general questions were asked in the webinar that are good to cover here as well:

PowerPivot Support for DB2?
Yes, PowerPivot supports DB2 data sources. PowerPivot comes pre-tested with a long list of data sources, these pre-tested data sources are listed in the PowerPivot interface. Additionally, 3^rd party data providers are supported by selecting the “From Other Data Sources” option in the PowerPivot window and selecting the ODBC/OLEDB provider you wish to use.

Limiting Data Imported?

You have the option to filter at every phase of the data import process:

·         On Load With Queries (TSQL/PLSQL, etc.)

·         Inside the PowerPivot workspace using Text & Numeric filtering

·         In the visualizations themselves
 

PowerPivot Support for Older Versions of Office?

This is a very common question we get asked, the response is just don’t do it. There is zero support for PowerPivot in Excel 2007 and while technically you could leverage SharePoint 2007 we highly advise against doing so as all of the server features of PowerPivot will not be available to you.

PowerPivot MAC Support?

No support for MAC as of this time

Happy PowerPivoting!
DC