Archive for the 'Internals' Category

Howto: Get more flexibility when importing data from text files

Published August 18, 2010 Configuration , Internals Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

By powerpivotgeek (dwickert@microsoft.com), on August 18th, 2010

Question: By default PowerPivot has two limitations when working with text files (using the Office ACE OLE DB provider): (1) will only import data from files with an extension of .txt, .tab, and .csv; and (2) it will only recognize tab, comma, semicolon, space, colon, and vertical bar and column delimiters. Is there a way to change PowerPivot’s configuration so that it will recognize other file extensions or column delimiters?

To continue reading, please click through to Howto: Get more flexibility when importing data from text files

PowerPivot Technical Diagram: PowerPivot Security Architecture

Published August 18, 2010 Configuration , Internals Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

Just in case you didn’t already know, we just uploaded the PowerPivot Security Architecture technical diagram on to sqlcat.com / MSDN.  To get access to the PDF, XPS, and/or VSD files, please click through to: http://sqlcat.com/whitepapers/archive/2010/08/17/powerpivot-technical-diagram-powerpivot-security-architecture.aspx

 PowerPivot Security Architecture

Enjoy!

[Note, this is cross posted from dennyglee.com in its entirety]

Working with the 2010 Office ACE provider

Published August 18, 2010 Configuration , Internals Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

By powerpivotgeek (dwickert@microsoft.com), on August 18th, 2010

Ok. I’ve promised some best practices – here is my first one.

What is the 2010 Office ACE provider and why is this important to PowerPivot? The 2010 Office System Driver for Data Connectivity Components (aka the Office ACE provider) is a OLE DB provider that can be used to read data from and write data to Office 2010 system files such as Microsoft Access Beta (mdb and accdb) files and Microsoft Excel 2010 (xls, xlsx, and xlsb) files. You can also use it to access text files.

Click through to continue reading Working with the 2010 Office ACE provider

What is a “snapshot” when you enable client-side tracing

Published August 2, 2010 Configuration , Internals Leave a Comment
Tags:

By powerpivotgeek (dwickert@hotmail.com), on August 2nd, 2010

In getting ready for a recent internal presentation on PowerPivot, I was asked what this button actually does . . . (see below)

image

The primary purpose for the settings page is to setup diagnostic tracing.

Continue Reading: What is a “snapshot” when you enable client-side tracing

Incoming emails to a PowerPivot Gallery

Published July 12, 2010 Internals Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

From time to time you run into something on SharePoint that is a known SharePoint ‘issue’, but you wouldn’t necessarily see PowerPivot being impacted. After all SharePoint is this huge juggernaut of a product and PowerPivot is just this one small little app in the corner. Well, here is one that I ran into today. We had a bug report that the incoming email setup for a PowerPivot Gallery was missing the ‘incoming emails’ link –> after some searching, I found this interesting posting:

Click through to continue reading.

PowerPivot, you are so insensitive! (case that is)

Published June 18, 2010 Internals , Perspectives Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

June 18, 2010 by dennyglee

Working with my compatriots Ayad Shammout (@aashammout) and Peter Myers, we had found out that PowerPivot at times can be really insensitive…in terms of case that is.  That is by default, the collation for PowerPivot is case-insensitive.

For example, if you import the table below:

Continue reading: PowerPivot, you are so insensitive! (case that is)

Why is allocation always selecting the same machine?

Published June 14, 2010 Configuration , Internals Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

By powerpivotgeek (dwickert@microsoft.com), on June 14th, 2010

If you are running PowerPivot for SharePoint on more than one backend app server, then it is a common issue that folks are seeing only one server being used. It turns out that this might be ‘by-design’ so let’s talk about it for a bit. Let’s look at the two allocation methods we support:

  • Round-Robin
  • Health-Based

Please click to continue reading.

PowerPivotGeek’s Tips, How-to, and A Peek Inside!

Published May 19, 2010 Internals , Perspectives , Usage 2 Comments
Tags: , ,

PowerPivotGeek has been doing a lot of GREAT posts the last week and its getting harder and harder to keep up with greatness!  Saying this, here are some great tips, how-to, and A Peek Inside!

Tips!

 

How-To

 

A Peek Inside!

Enjoy!

Customizing the PowerPivot Management Dashboard

Published May 10, 2010 Configuration , Internals Leave a Comment
Tags:

(preliminary pre-release)

Copyright © 2010, Microsoft Corporation, All rights reserved.
Primary Author: Ankur Goyal, SQL-Analysis Services
Technical Reviewer: John Hancock, Dave Wickert, Lee Graber, and Artur Pop

Abstract

The purpose of PowerPivot for SharePoint is to allow users to share their PowerPivot workbooks in a secure and scalable environment. This whitepaper focuses on the features that SQL Server 2008 R2 provides to help IT users to manage and understand the self-service BI activity. This whitepaper also describes key features of the PowerPivot Management Dashboard that we provide with PowerPivot for SharePoint. The PowerPivot Management Dashboard is built using PowerPivot, SharePoint web part pages and Excel Services technologies. This white paper describes how IT users can extend the capabilities of the management dashboard by creating their own custom reports and dashboard.

To read this great whitepaper, please click here.

PowerPivot Technical Diagram: PowerPivot Client/Server Architecture

Published April 28, 2010 Internals , Perspectives Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Because PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint involve many components from SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services, Office 2010, and SharePoint 2010, this poster contains all of the key components that make up PowerPivot in one view. This view includes nearly all of the logical architecture components and illustrates how these componets work together.

Included in this diagram are the components for:

  • PowerPivot for Excel
  • PowerPivot for SharePoint
  • Browser-Based Clients and their connection to PowerPivot
  • Data Import and Data Providers in relation to PowerPivot
  • Analysis Services Clients and their ability to connect to PowerPivot
  • Timer Jobs, Health and Usage Data Collection in relation to PowerPivot

For more information, please go to the reference sqlcat.com site: PowerPivot Technical Diagram: PowerPivot Client/Server Architecture

Next Page »

Denny Lee’s Tweets (1/2 of PowerPivot Twins!)

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 Denny G Lee - All Rights Reserved