PowerPivot – Checking what the hype is all about – Part 1: Installation
With so much talk about PowerPivot, “BI for the masses”, collaboration and, of course, world peace, I decided I’ll finally give PowerPivot a test run and see what the hype is all about. Attending the PASS summit a couple of months ago, this was by far the most talked about feature in the upcoming SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 products and it seems Microsoft is really excited with this new add-in.
So, in the coming 2-3 blog posts I’ll try to describe how this tool works, and no better place to start with then the adventures of trying to get it installed in the first place.
You need to get Office 2010 installed, this is really the only way you can use Excel with PowerPivot. Excel 2007 does not support PowerPivot. You need to register for the Beta plan and download the installation file. I only installed the Excel component, even though I was curious to look at the new Word and PowerPoint, I did not want to diverge… Installation was painless!
Next I installed the PowerPivot for Excel Add-in. Double clicking the .msi file and going through a couple of wizard screens and we’re off – again, nothing special here, and more importantly, it simply goes smoothly.
Opening Excel after the add-in installation, you’ll be prompted and asked if you want to install the new add-in. By all means, I clicked “Install"…
All goes well, and a new tab, under the name “PowerPivot” is added to the Excel ribbon:
This is pretty much it! no hassles and really an easy installation process to get PowerPivot up and running on your local machine. Note that even though the PowerPivot feature is strongly coupled (in marketing terms) with the SQL Server 2008 R2 edition, you do not need SQL Server 2008 R2 installed to use PowerPivot. PowerPivot can connect to any data source and present data in an OLAP-like manner on Excel, as long as you use Excel 2010, that’s all you need. Things are different though if you want to share your PowerPivot reports and database with others, using SharePoint and/or Analysis Services. you then do need the SQL Server 2008 R2 edition in order to accomplish this.
Next post we’ll do some basic reporting using PowerPivot and see the magic in action.
-Yaniv
(This is post number 7 for week number 6 of my SQL blog challenge)