SQL Server 2014 bi new features (i) Data Explorer in Excel

Data Explorer is a new feature in the upcoming SQL Server 2014, which is a feature that makes self-service business intelligence in an enterprise more flexible and thus lowers the threshold for business intelligence.

This article is found in the Microsoft Business Intelligence Official Blog, I am here not only its simple translation over, but also added a number of personal insights and notes, if you are interested in the original text can click the link below to view the original;

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_business_intelligence1/archive/2013/05/15/5- Things-you-need-to-know-about-microsoft-data-explorer-preview-for-excel.aspx

Data Explorer Preview for Excel provides a new way to discover data for self-service business intelligence, consolidate it, and refine it. If you are unfamiliar with it, the following five points will give you an idea of how it can improve the way you work with data in Excel.

With the help of data Explorer, you can:

1. Data discovery

Data Explorer brings up the concept of searching in Excel (not a simple document). In other words, you can retrieve public data in Excel. In Excel you can get rich and interactive data, and when you find the data you want, simply click on the mouse to import the data into your Excel workbook.

The screenshot below is retrieving data on "Europe's largest city" in Excel.

2. A wide range of data source connections

Data Explorer supports connections from a wide variety of sources, including simple text data and more complex Hadoop data.

Among them, the text-type data includes:

Text based sources (plain text, CSV)

Xml

Excel file

Access database

Folders (Treat a file under a folder as a table)

Support for Web page data sources includes:

A table in a Web page

Web Apis/json

OData

Relational engines, including:

SQL Server, Windows Azure SQL Database, SQL Server PDW

Oracle

Teradata

DB2

Mysql

PostgreSQL

Other data sources, including:

Windows Azure Marketplace

SharePoint Lists

Active Directory

Hadoop

Windows Azure Hdinsight

Facebook

More data sources will be added to the official team and, of course, if you want to get support for a data source, you can also contact the official team directly.