Does PowerPivot have any data access APIs? Is there any way to to programmatically access the data store?

I figured that a lot of people will eventually ask this question (heck, that’s what I had asked when I had first heard about PowerPivot).  The answer as of 2010 is:

Right now, there is no supported way to access the data store within Excel as all PowerPivot for Excel APIs are private.  Saying this, the data store backup is stored within Excel itself as per the posting For Excel PowerPivot, the database is IN the workbook. 

Saying this, once you upload the workbook to SharePoint, you can then access the workbook as a SSAS database because that’s what it actually is (an Analysis Services in VertiPaq mode database). Any client that can query MDX can go ahead and query this database using the PowerPivot workbook within SharePoint as its data source (i.e. the data source is http://mySharePointSite/PowerPivot%20Gallery/MyWorkbook.xlsx as opposed to the traditional “driver=msolap.4;data source=server;initial catalog=database“).

I hope this helps!

So the fate… of the entire human race depends upon my wild guess

     — Doctor Gaius Baltar (Battlestar Galactica)
 
 

Actually, the quote that I really wanted to say was “So the fate… of the entire PowerPivot deployment depends upon my wild a** guess?!  WTF!!!”
 

Yet, this is not the time for us to go quietly in the night! 

Do not go gentle into that good night! (Dylan Thomas)

Okay, I’ll stop now.

But seriously, PowerPivot for SharePoint for an existing farm installation can be complex and mind numbing at times – especially with the 20 steps involved to get it up and running.

To make this process a little bit easier with screenshots and additional guidance, we’ve published the PowerPivot for SharePoint – Existing Farm Installation guide. 

Hope this helps!  If you have any comments or thoughts, please place comments onto the linked guide so it is all consolidated, eh?!

Enjoy!

So hats off to the Analysis Services product team for building an easier PowerPivot for SharePoint installation by providing us with the “New Server” installation choice.    Yet, even with the easier installation steps, it is important to make sure you do the steps in the right order and have the correct prerequisites installed to make it a smooth installation experience.

During the CTP (Community Technology Preview) process, a number of us had got together to create the PowerPivot for SharePoint installation guides.  We had created a set of draft copies that were available at http://powerpivotgeek.com/server-installation/single-server-install/. Ultimately, a great installation guide is also found in the How to: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on a New SharePoint Server.

But there is always the ask to create a guide with pictures and/or video – which I have to admit makes things a lot easier to read and install at the same time.  Because of this, there are two new very useful tools to help out:

1) PowerPivot for SharePoint: Single Server Installation Guide – This guide contains the installation steps plus plenty of screenshots to help make the install steps a little easier.

2) PowerPivot for SharePoint: Single Server Installation Video – This video is created by the illustrious PowerPivotGeek – i.e. Dave Wickert.  Informing and enjoyable at the same time!

Hope this makes your PowerPivot for SharePoint Single Server Installation more enjoyable!….or at least less painful, eh?!

Enjoy…or not

• ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
• ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

So after doing this multiple times, I proceeded to do my usual atom feed import like I usually do:

Repro the issue

1) Go to my SharePoint List and click on Export as Data Feed

2)  When requested to do a File Download of the List.atomsvc file, click Open

3) Because you installed PowerPivot on your box, it will give you the option to import this Atom feed into an existing (e.g. Book1) or new workbook.  Choose appropriately and click OK.

4) It’ll provide you the Table Import Wizard so you can import your feed

5) Everything works like usual in terms of a PowerPivot data import

.

What did I expect?

6) But instead of the nice message indicating that you had imported data properly:

so it shows up nicely in your PowerPivot workbook

.

What did I actually get?

7) you get this strange error message:

in text this is:

For security reasons DTD is prohibited in this XML document.  To enable DTD processing set the ProhibitDtd property on XmlReaderSettings to false and pass the settings into XmlReader.Create method.

So how do I FIX this?

Thanks to John McConnell for reminding me that sometimes the solution is to do something simple (for context, I just had published the PowerPivot Security Architecture so my brain is still fried).

So the solution is to simply re-install ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 again.  Yup, rather long bit of writing to simply say – install it again!

But there you have it

Enjoy!

In homage to Rob Collie’s blog posting style (yes!…he has style, he has grace, …) and of course the movie “Dude, Where’s my Car?”, let’s ask a new question: Dude, where’s my PowerPivot workbook?

And before you ask, we’re not talking about searching for the workbook somewhere in your “My Documents” folder, USB drive or SkyDrive.  What we’re referring to here is the fact that you went ahead and saved your PowerPivot workbook to the SharePoint, typically through the Excel Save As or Save to SharePoint function as noted in the posting: Uploading #PowerPivot for Excel workbook using “Save As” vs. SharePoint UI. 

What ultimately happens is that after you save your large workbook to SharePoint from Excel, and then when you go to your PowerPivot Gallery within SharePoint, you will see the error message below.

Dude, where’s my PowerPivot workbook?

So here’s the answer – its most likely still being uploaded.   As noted in the blog post Uploading #PowerPivot for Excel workbook using “Save As” vs. SharePoint UI, remember that when you Save to SharePoint:

• The workbook is initially saved to a local cache folder: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\14.0
• The local cache version of the file is then asynchronously posted to SharePoint.  This is done via the Cobalt protocol pushing the file in small chunks up to the SharePoint WFE.
• Meanwhile, you can continue using the real version of the workbook locally via your Excel client.

If you have a very large file, the reason for the error message is because the entire file has not been transferred from your local cache folder to SharePoint.    So when you click to look for it, because the SharePoint WFE hasn’t received all of the chunks to put it back together, it cannot find it hence the lovely message above.

Gee great….what can I do about it?

Patience…young Skywalker PowerPivot for SharePoint Information Worker

Yeah, the key thing here is to wait until the file has been successfully uploaded to SharePoint.  The advantage of asynchronous upload is that it doesn’t prevent you from continuing your work; the disadvantage is that you don’t actually know when the file is completely uploaded.

The Office Upload Center should tell you this but that’s not always a guarantee.  If you believe there is a problem with the upload, make sure to look at that first.  If you’re still running into problems, then refer to the post Uploading #PowerPivot for Excel workbook using “Save As” vs. SharePoint UI (third time the charm here) to debug, eh?!

Happy pivoting!

But it’s not like I haven’t been tweeting about PowerPivot…thank goodness I can easily retweet or type 140 characters! (follow me @dennylee)

But I do have a good excuse!  Really!

Oh, and for those of you patient enough to read to the end, I do have an interesting sneak peek for you

RTM… aaaaaaahhhhhh!!

RTM is driving me nuts…but then again, Dave Wickert (PowerPivotGeek) has been handling this like a champ (he’s got some great postings on his site: PowerPivotGeek.com, eh?!).  His and my postings are re-posted on PowerPivotTwins.com – the PowerPivotTwins in one place – yay!

Some great ones that you really need to review include:

• A Peek Inside: Allocation. What is it? Why is it important?: This is a really important post because it talks about why you should use the health-based load balancing allocation method.  If you plan to have a lot of users on your PowerPivot for SharePoint environment involving multiple servers – read this posting!
• PowerPivot Component Architecture: As noted in the blog post, this is an excerpt from “Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot Planning and Deployment” whitepaper will be coming out shortly.  Once its published, we’ll point to it from this blog post, SQLCAT.com, PowerPivot blog, etc.  But if you want to understand all of the components within PowerPivot – from Excel Services to the OLE DB Provider for Analysis Services to PowerPivot System Service – here’s the sneak peek, eh?!
• Help: c2wts has fallen and it cannot get up: As noted in the above PowerPivot Component architecture, in order to facilitate communication from PowerPivot System Service to the Analysis Services Engine in VertiPaq mode, we need the Claims to Windows Token Service up and running.  Sometimes c2wts starts up slowly (if its not running, then you will get an Excel Services delegation error); this great post from Dave provides some tips on how to get c2wts working faster.

Writing, Writing, … and Writing

Fair enough, this is just a blatant self promotion here, but I’ve been working nights and weekends with my Analysis Services compatriots Siva Harinath and Ron Pihlgren on our upcoming book: Professional Business Intelligence with PowerPivot for Microsoft Office 2010

Why not pre-order this book and make my publisher happy .    But seriously, we hope this book provides you a great end-to-end picture of PowerPivot, eh?!

Can I blame it on the Apple iPad?

Yes, just like the NY Times, I’ve been drooling over this device over the last month or so.  Perhaps my mind was entranced over the large screen and just how dang cool it looks.  Alas, as amazing as it is – it couldn’t hold me over for a month – geez!  Actually, if you follow me via Twitter or Facebook at all, you’ll probably notice the tweet:

Don’t say I don’t love the game of ultimate frisbee, I chose going to gnarly nines tourney in JeJu (South Korea) over an Apple iPad!

In reality, that’s what’s been driving me nuts – the fact that I had to choose between an ultimate tournament or an Apple iPad…and amazingly, I chose the former.

And here I am in all my (fat) glory hucking a disc – because dang it, I love the game of ultimate.  Enough that the Gnarly Nines tourney in Jeju is holding sway over me even though I’m old, fat, cannot run, frankly untalented….yeah, that just about covers it!

Nah…it was TechReady 10!

Ahh…but for all of you that follow me on FourSquare, perhaps its a different story.  From there, you’ll realize that one of the Microsoft employee conferences we have each year is called TechReady (similar to TechEd – which is New Orleans in June this year) except for employees only and always in Seattle (whew, less flying).

And with all of the Analysis Service AND PowerPivot stuff that we were talking about – that just frankly took the cake and wore me out. 

Well, that’s the sneak peek in store.  If you are fans of the SharePoint Technical diagrams (poster diagrams providing excellent view of SharePoint), well over the next few months – we will be releasing PowerPivot Technical diagrams as well!  I figured I’d jump the punch because there were some postings and questions fielded after TechReady, eh?! 

To infinity…and beyond!

So things are starting to get more normal for me and I’ll start blogging again with all sorts of cool PowerPivot and Analysis Services stuff, eh?!  And as soon as the first of the many PowerPivot Technical Diagrams is ready for your review, we’ll publish them and blog / tweet crazy, eh?!

Enjoy!

But if I want to modify or view the properties of the individual report – how do I do this?  Well, it’s all about the different views within the PowerPivot Gallery.

To change the views go to the Ribbon > Library and under the “Current View” you can change the view of your PowerPivot Gallery (the above is the Carousel view).

Choose the Public > All Documents one and then you get your friendly SharePoint documents view within the PowerPivot Gallery.  From there, you can click on the individual document and choose the various menu options associated with the individual file.

HTH!

To perform an Excel “Save As”, you need only to click on “Save As” within the File option of the Office Ribbon and specify the PowerPivot Gallery of your SharePoint site.

Figure 1: Excel “Save As” functionality

When you do, you’ll notice the Office Upload Center icon pop up in the notification area.

Figure 2: Microsoft Office Upload Center within the Notification area

If you open the Office Upload Center, it will provide a dialog of all of the files that it has pending upload or recently uploaded.

Figure 3: List of files being uploaded (notice Pending Uploads) to the SharePoint site.

When it works great, well, it works great!  In order for the Office Upload Center to perform its tasks, it will create a copy of the file in its cache and then upload the cached version of the file to SharePoint (hence allowing you to work with the original file in the meantime).   Notice how on Figure 4 that there is a large file that is curiously the same size as my original Excel file.

Figure 4: Office Upload Center Cache location

There are times where there are errors with the upload with the Office Upload Center.  If they do, they should show up in the Pending Uploads section of the Office Upload Center.   From here, you click on “Actions” (notice the Actions button in Figure 3) which should allow you to delete it.

If for some reason you cannot delete it, then what you can do is:

1. Kill the Office Upload Center process within task manager (MSOSYNC.exe)
2. Go to the C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\14.0 location.  Often if there are issue with uploading through this method, you can delete the files in this directory.You may also want to delete the files in the
   1. C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.MSO
   2. C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\Temp\TfsStore\Tfs_DAV

Ensure that you have the original files still stored somewhere else before deleting these files but this should clear out the cache and you can then re-start the upload all over again.

For Quick Tips for clearing up space #PowerPivot for SharePoint Uploading, please refer to the linked blog posting.  Note that the reason a PowerPivot for Excel workbook may fail to upload via the SharePoint UI is that you’ll need to clear out the files within SharePoint (as per the blog posting).

Enjoy!

Saying this, there are some other quick tips as well:

• The SharePoint Server local cache is the c:\windows\temp\WebTempDir.  This folder can fill up real fast so you may want to clear out this folder every so often and/or aim the local cache to another folder altogether
• By default, SharePoint keeps all documents even after they are deleted within the SharePoint content database for up to 30 days.  This means your content database may significantly increase in size if you upload alot of large PowerPivot for SharePoint files. Therefore, to fully delete SharePoint documents and free up space, you need to delete them from three places:

1. Delete from the document library.
2. Delete from the recycle bin of the site.
3. Delete from Site Settings -> Site Collection Administration -> Recycle Bin (note that you need to be a Site Collection Admin in order to do this).
4. Also delete the files within the Deleted from end user Recycle Bin.  This area allows you to restore and are automatically deleted in 30 days.  But if you need the space now, then you should delete this as well.

In a future blog posting, I will also talk about the issues concerning SharePoint file uploading and potential optimizations for upload.

HTH!