Specifications
190 CHAPTER 10 Self-Service Analysis with PowerPivot
PowerPivot for Excel
PowerPivot for Excel is an add-in that extends the functionality of Excel 2010 to support
analysis of large, related datasets on your computer. After installing the add-in, you can
import data from external data sources and integrate it with local les, and then develop the
presentation objects, all within the Excel environment. You save all your work in a single le
that is easy to manage and share.
The PowerPivot Add-in for Excel
To create your own PowerPivot workbooks or to edit workbooks that others have created,
you must rst install the PowerPivot add-in for Excel 2010.
Modications to Excel
When you install the add-in, several changes are made to Excel. First, the installation adds
the PowerPivot menu to the Excel ribbon. Second, it adds the PowerPivot window, a design
environment for working with PowerPivot data within Excel. You can use this design environ-
ment to import millions of rows of data, which you can later view as summarized results in
Excel worksheets.
When you are ready to create a PowerPivot workbook, you click the PowerPivot tab on the
Excel ribbon and click the PowerPivot Window button in the Launch group (shown in Fig-
ure 10-1) to open the PowerPivot window. The PowerPivot window opens separately from the
Excel window, which allows you to switch back and forth as necessary between working with
your PowerPivot data and working with the presentation of that data in Excel worksheets.
FIGURE 10-1 The PowerPivot Window button in the Excel window
The Local Analysis Services Engine
The add-in also installs a local Analysis Services engine on your computer. Installation also
adds the client providers necessary for connecting to Analysis Services. PowerPivot uses the
Analysis Services engine to compress and process large volumes of data, which Analysis Ser-
vices loads into workbook objects.
The Analysis Services engine runs exclusively in-process in Excel, which means that there
is no need to manage a separate Windows service running on your computer. This version
of Analysis Services uses the new VertiPaq storage mode, which works efciently with large
volumes of columnar data in memory. For example, VertiPaq mode allows you to very quickly
sort and lter millions of rows of data. Furthermore, you can store workbooks on your local
drive because VertiPaq compresses the data by tenfold on average.