If you thought everything in the August Technology Preview was great (for a reminder of what was there see the Overview of Gemini Features posting from August) please take a look at what will be offered in the November Preview.
Numerous enhancements were added to the Gemini field list. These include:
· Automatic detection of relationships when columns from unrelated tables are used in a PivotTable.
· Support for searching fields by name
· Support for named sets
· Support for refreshing data for table, for all tables from a data source, or for all the tables Gemini.
· Support for editing data source information such as server name, database name and credentials.
· Support for editing table settings such as data source table or query used, columns imported and filters.
This CTP introduces targeted support for importing data from:
· Microsoft Access
· Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
· PowerPivot workbooks published to Analysis Services running in SharePoint Integrated Mode
· Text files
· Excel workbooks
· Microsoft SQL Azure
· Oracle
· Teradata
· Sybase
· Informix
· DB2
This CTP significantly expands the DAX functionality previous available:
· User interface enhancements include better propagation of errors and easier creation of DAX formulas.
· Several functions were added, including a set of functions that operate on textual data as well as those that provide common Date and Time manipulations.
· Several performance and functional capabilities were introduced including automatic recalculation
· Introduction of support for handling referential integrity violations between related tables
· Automatic selection of data types for expressions.
This CTP introduces a management dashboard for IT. This dashboard provides visibility into PowerPivot usage on a SharePoint farm that includes information about the following areas, as well as a rich PowerPivot workbook that can be used to build custom reports:
· Published PowerPivot workbooks, including number of queries executed, number of users and size per workbook
· Hardware resource utilization for the PowerPivot service including CPU and memory
· Data refresh activity
· Claims-aware support to enable users identity to flow between SharePoint components in a secure manner
· Parallelized refresh of PowerPivot data
· Performance optimizations
Get the PowerPivot November Technology Preview now at http://powerpivot.com/download.aspx
For instructions on installing PowerPivot for SharePoint go here.
Additional questions or need help? Try our public forums for PowerPivot for Excel or PowerPivot for SharePoint.