Question on PowerPivot 2012

Question

Two questions on powerpivot

1. do powerpivot 2012 support role playing dimensions? or do we still have the limitation of a single relationship between two tables?

2. Can I install powerpivot 2012 service app on my sharepoint 2010 farm WITHOUT upgrading my SQL infrastructure. My SQL is running on 2008 R2 and I don't intend to upgrade that so soon... but want to use PowerPivot 2012.

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MSDNStudent Knows not much!

Answer 1

1. PowerPivot 2012 supports a kind of role playing dimension.   It's possible to create multiple relationships betweem lets say a DATE table and a FACT table.

There needs to be be default relationship set and then when you want to use a different one you need to say so in your measure calculation using the USERELATIONSHIP function.

2. SQL 2012 is required for using PowerPivot 2012 in a SharePoint environment.

Answer 2

2. SQL 2012 is required for using PowerPivot 2012 in a SharePoint environment.

And If you want use powerpivot 2012 on excel, you need only excel 2010 and sql 2008 R2

Answer 3

> . SQL 2012 is required for using PowerPivot 2012 in a SharePoint environment.

The question is where?

is SQL 2012 required on all SharePoint WFE's where PowerPivot Service App will run?

or all content databases and service application databases should be upgraded to SP2012 RDBMS?

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MSDNStudent Knows not much!

Answer 4

bump! can you clarify please? when you say SQL 2012 you mean the powerpivot install on the WFE/SA server? or do you mean the RDBMS hosting all the databases? are you saying that the RDBMS needs an upgrade too if I were to install the powerpivot service app?

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MSDNStudent Knows not much!

Answer 5

Two questions on powerpivot

1. do powerpivot 2012 support role playing dimensions? or do we still have the limitation of a single relationship between two tables?

2. Can I install powerpivot 2012 service app on my sharepoint 2010 farm WITHOUT upgrading my SQL infrastructure. My SQL is running on 2008 R2 and I don't intend to upgrade that so soon... but want to use PowerPivot 2012.

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MSDNStudent Knows not much!

1. Role playing dimensions can be achieved in PowerPivot by importing the dimension table multiple times to the PowerPivot model.  You can then establish one relationship from the fact table to each of the imported dimension tables.

2. To your second question, this is depend on your requirement, both PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint have some new feature just like below, if you only want to use the new PowerPivot feature for Excel, you only need to Upgrade PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot Data, if you want to use the new PowerPivot feature for SharePoint, you can Upgrade PowerPivot for SharePoint,

New feature:

PowerPivot for Excel	PowerPivot for Excel (SQL Server 2012) DAX Functions in this Release
PowerPivot for SharePoint	PowerPivot Configuration Tool PowerShell for PowerPivot for SharePoint BI Semantic Model Connection Files in SharePoint PowerPivot for SharePoint Configuration Settings and Server Health Rules PowerPivot Workbook Auto-upgrade to Enable Data Refresh

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Challen Fu

TechNet Community Support

Answer 6

> 1. Role playing dimensions can be achieved in PowerPivot by importing the dimension table multiple times to the PowerPivot model

But isn't this is pain for the end users. when they are applying a slicer on the fact table. if there are 10 copies of the dimension table, then they have to specify the same date slicer for each of the table.

Clearly this doesn't help the user.

I have learnt that PowerPivot 2.0 can be installed on SP2010 without upgrading the entire SQL RDBMS.

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MSDNStudent Knows not much!

Answer 7

hi can you refer the below link for your reference.

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=29