It??™s still not
as powerful as the ProClarity Professional client??”which is obviously dedicated
to doing nothing but analysis against an Analysis Services cube??”but Excel 2007
contains significant improvements for performing analytics, and has moved into
the realm where it is a real option for all but pure data analysts. Once again, the key
point is to know the users and what they need when looking at data. It??™s entirely
possible that Excel 2007 will satisfy the needs of many knowledge workers in
the organization when they need to perform analysis beyond that provided by the
Analytic Chart or Analytic Grid of PerformancePoint Server.
Performing Analysis with Excel 2007
In late 2006, Microsoft released Office 2007 and SQL Server Service Pack 2. The
reason these two releases roughly coincided was that SQL Server Service Pack 2
included a number of Analysis Services enhancements designed to better integrate
with Office 2007. The Office and Analysis Services teams worked closely to ensure
that Excel 2007 would support nearly all the features of Analysis Services 2005 and
would be a powerful client tool for analyzing the data in cubes.
Excel 2007 achieves this through many enhancements to the PivotTable and
PivotChart reports in Excel. The PivotTable and PivotChart tools are nothing new in
Excel, but they now provide significantly stronger tools and capabilities for performing
analytics. Excel 2007 now understands measure groups, KPIs, actions, and many other
features of Analysis Services 2005.
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