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Does PowerPivot of MS-Excel resemble to MS-Access ?

Simple answer is NO, two different programs doing a similar thing,

Excel to crunch huge amounts of data and get screwed up because middle management want it to look pretty when they present your work to upper management, and they will not mention how much you have slaved over it, unless upper management don't like it, then your name will be upfront in neon lights.
Excel is a flat data base with limits in working with data and reports.

Access to store huge amounts of related data and present reports on data that may have been pulled from Excel, far better program for multi users as you can restricted what can and cannot be entered in to the database, more secure from idiots as you can pull the front end from the back end and by doing this have different user access levels on different machines (you can really naff of middle management with restrictions, and when they ask why, you can tell them in a loud voice, in front of their work colleges, they are not on that level of access)

Much easier to design user forms and email reports in Access.
Relationship data base which works very well with data that has loose connections to other data through the relationships you set up.


,
 
Hi Prasenjit ,

In its ability to handle large volumes of data Powerpivot does resemble Access , but this is a very superficial resemblance.

In reality they are vastly different.

Access is a database management system , which can store data , and process it in all the different ways that any DBMS can , though not necessarily to the same extent ; obviously Access cannot be compared to Oracle.

Powerpivot handles data the way Excel pivot tables do , but in a vastly superior way , so that the data processing power of Powerpivot is orders of magnitude higher than that of Excel pivot tables.

As far as analysts are concerned , they now have a business intelligence tool which earlier required an IT specialist to manage. Querying database tables with all their complex relationships required an SQL programmer ; with Powerpivot , you can achieve almost as much , without needing any knowledge of SQL.

See the following links for more in-depth information :

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141105095015-27895769-why-is-powerpivot-important

http://sqlmag.com/blog/does-excel-power-pivot-replace-data-warehouse

http://www.pcworld.com/article/205260/how_microsoft_powerpivot_will_disrupt_bi.html

http://ebs.dk/en-US/aboutbi/Pages/PowerPivot-isitgood.aspx

Narayan
 
You can think of PowerPivot as a way of bringing lots of disparate data sources into Excel - the PowerPivot sits behind Excel and links them. You can create relationships between the data sources - but you cannot edit or change the data in the PowerPivot window. You can write more powerful formulae in PP and especially perform more complex time value calculations. It uses a language known as DAX - think of it as Excel + - it has similarities to Excel

There are some good introductory texts out there - I liked the DAX Formuals for Power Pivot by Rob Collie as a starting point - he introduces a gradual leaarning curve for understanding PP.

Collie describes PP as like getting 15 years of Excel upgrades in one shot ... having said that, it hasn't taken off as I would have expected it to - but then perhaps I mistakenly believe that the Excel universe looks like Chandoo.org, and that, alas, is not the case ..
 
Hi All,

Just my little thought on this topic, although I use Excel 2010 with Power Pivot Add-in added, I don't really use it for any of my personal or official purpose, I just installed it for the sake of learning it. And the major reason for not using it is that unlike Excel is a package which will differ from users to users based on what version they have. Still there are so many users who uses 2003 or 2007, in which Power pivot will not work. Even you cannot edit pivot created by Power Pivot in 2013 in 2010. Now you cannot ask everybody to change their version or purchase a new one.

But if you make something in database package like Access you can ask just to install access from the standard package of MS.

I think if you have a common version platform of Excel and that too 2010+ and if the upgrades happens across that platform than it is good but if your files are intended to go to users which can have different versions (like some may be using Excel 2008 or Excel 2011 for MAC) than it is not good.

But nothing BAD in learning it. The best part I like about it creating relationship in different tables like access.

Regards,
 
Hi All,

Just my little thought on this topic, although I use Excel 2010 with Power Pivot Add-in added, I don't really use it for any of my personal or official purpose, I just installed it for the sake of learning it. And the major reason for not using it is that unlike Excel is a package which will differ from users to users based on what version they have. Still there are so many users who uses 2003 or 2007, in which Power pivot will not work. Even you cannot edit pivot created by Power Pivot in 2013 in 2010. Now you cannot ask everybody to change their version or purchase a new one.

But if you make something in database package like Access you can ask just to install access from the standard package of MS.

I think if you have a common version platform of Excel and that too 2010+ and if the upgrades happens across that platform than it is good but if your files are intended to go to users which can have different versions (like some may be using Excel 2008 or Excel 2011 for MAC) than it is not good.

But nothing BAD in learning it. The best part I like about it creating relationship in different tables like access.

Regards,
Good points - getting the thing installed can be a bit of a trial for the reasons explained by Somendra, and the version issues can be annoying, but it's Excel on steroids and can do some pretty clever stuff :DD
 
Hi Prasenjit ,

In its ability to handle large volumes of data Powerpivot does resemble Access , but this is a very superficial resemblance.

In reality they are vastly different.

Access is a database management system , which can store data , and process it in all the different ways that any DBMS can , though not necessarily to the same extent ; obviously Access cannot be compared to Oracle.

Powerpivot handles data the way Excel pivot tables do , but in a vastly superior way , so that the data processing power of Powerpivot is orders of magnitude higher than that of Excel pivot tables.

As far as analysts are concerned , they now have a business intelligence tool which earlier required an IT specialist to manage. Querying database tables with all their complex relationships required an SQL programmer ; with Powerpivot , you can achieve almost as much , without needing any knowledge of SQL.

See the following links for more in-depth information :

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141105095015-27895769-why-is-powerpivot-important

http://sqlmag.com/blog/does-excel-power-pivot-replace-data-warehouse

http://www.pcworld.com/article/205260/how_microsoft_powerpivot_will_disrupt_bi.html

http://ebs.dk/en-US/aboutbi/Pages/PowerPivot-isitgood.aspx

Narayan
Hi @NARAYANK991 ,
Thanks for the reply. I want to ask one more question. Do you think that for a data analyst, is it better to learn PowerPivot than to MS-Access ?
Regards,
Prasenjit
 
Hi Prasenjit ,

The advantages of learning Powerpivot and learning Access are quite different ; as a data analyst , the more important skills are to do with statistics and how to analyse data using statistics.

Thus , in your work as a data analyst , you are likely to use Excel to a greater extent than you are likely to use Access ; to that extent , learning Powerpivot is more advantageous.

Narayan
 
Hi Prasenjit ,

The advantages of learning Powerpivot and learning Access are quite different ; as a data analyst , the more important skills are to do with statistics and how to analyse data using statistics.

Thus , in your work as a data analyst , you are likely to use Excel to a greater extent than you are likely to use Access ; to that extent , learning Powerpivot is more advantageous.

Narayan
Hi @NARAYANK991

Thanks for the reply and advice.

Regards,
Prasenjit
 
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