Some weeks after my blog post about Bonavista Dimensions I’ve been able to look at a comprehensive demo of XLCubed , but since then I’ve been too busy to write about that (and in general to blog – I have several topics I will blog about as soon as the  Read more

One new nice feature of Excel 2010 is the Slicer. Usually, slicers are used to filter data in a PivotTable. But they might be also useful to parameterize an algorithm or a chart! We discussed this technique in our book , but Alberto Ferrari wrote a post  Read more

One week ago Alberto Ferrari wrote a post about how to do working days calculation in PowerPivot . You might think this is necessary only for accounting department or something like that… but in reality the same techniques are really useful to implement  Read more

Recently I have seen a long demo of BonaVista Dimensions . It is a product that is able to create reports and, most important dashboards. You can use it also without SQL Server and Analysis Services, just by importing data in a local cube file that you  Read more

Microsoft Press just announced the printing of Microsoft Excel 2010: Data Analysis and Business Modeling , which is the third edition of the book written by Wayne L. Winston covering many data analysis and modeling techniques using a very clear problem-solution  Read more

Microsoft recently announced a new roadmap for its BI architecture. The next version of SQL Server, codenamed “Denali”, is going to introduce a new semantic model named BISM (Business Intelligence Semantic Model). Analysis Services will host it and it  Read more

Yesterday I delivered my Inside DAX session at PASS 2010. Someone might have missed the link to buy the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 book with a 50% discount that is valid just today. The link is http://oreil.ly/sqlpass2010 !  Read more

You can download these two sample chapters of the PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning book: Chapter 2 - PowerPivot at Work This is introductive and suggested to read to anyone who is new to PowerPivot Chapter 7 – Date Calculations in DAX  Read more

Banding is one of the most common requirements when you have the need to analyze continuous values, like the retail price of a product which may change over time, due to discounts and price variations. I have already spoken about banding with regards  Read more

This topic is general and not related to a specific feature of PowerPivot. In the way it is designed today, when data are imported from a SSAS cube into PowerPivot, the dimensionality of the original cube is lost and a flat table is imported as the result  Read more