PowerPivot
| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Stable release | Microsoft SQL Server 2012 - Power Pivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 - Service Pack 2 / June 10, 2014 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Type | OLAP, Data Mining, Business Intelligence |
| License | Microsoft EULA |
| Website | http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43348 |
Power Pivot is a free add-in to the 2010 version of the spreadsheet application Microsoft Excel. In Excel 2013, Power Pivot is only available for certain versions of Office.[1] It extends the capabilities of the pivot table data summarization and cross-tabulation feature with new features such as expanded data capacity, advanced calculations, ability to import data from multiple sources, and the ability to publish the workbooks as interactive web applications.[2] As such, Power Pivot falls under Microsoft's Business Intelligence offering, complementing it with its self-service, in-memory capabilities.
Prior to the release of Power Pivot, Microsoft relied heavily on SQL Server Analysis Services as the engine for its Business Intelligence suite. PowerPivot complements the SQL Server core BI components under the vision of one Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM), which aims to integrate on-disk multidimensional analytics previously known as Unified Dimensional Model (UDM), with a more flexible, in-memory "tabular" model.
As a self-service BI product, Power Pivot is intended to allow users with no specialised BI or analytics training to develop data models and calculations, sharing them either directly or through SharePoint document libraries.
As part of the July 8, 2013, announcement of the new "Power BI" suite of self-service tools, Microsoft renamed PowerPivot as "Power Pivot" in order to match the naming convention of other tools in the suite.[3]