Applied Microsoft Business Intelligence

Chapter 12Visualizing Your Data Interactively with Power View

With the release of SQL Server 2012 came a new Microsoft reporting tool called Power View, codenamed Project Crescent. Power View is different from the existing reporting tools made available by Microsoft. It won't take you long to realize that Power View is designed to be quick and easy yet colorful, visual, and dynamic. Creating dynamic and interactive reports with Power View is simply a matter of clicking, dragging, and dropping. Microsoft purposely designed Power View to be as simple as possible, so simple in fact that at this time there is no place in the tool to write code, add expressions, or use any kind of formula.

Power View is the perfect reporting tool for the end user who may not necessarily be technically savvy. With its simplicity, Power View begs the user to explore the data using its interactive visualizations. These impressive visualizations and Power View's simple-to-use interface make Power View the ideal tool for ad hoc reporting, data exploration, and interactive presentations.

This chapter delves into the features and abilities of Power View and discusses how you and your organization can utilize one of the newest Microsoft reporting technologies. By the end of this chapter, you will have gained a clearer understanding of the capabilities of Power View and will have learned how to create Power View reports in SharePoint as well as Excel.

Where Does Power View Fit with Your Reporting Solution? ...