Professional SQL Server™ Analysis Services 2005 with MDX

15.3. Office Web Component Pivot Table

To present Office data within web pages, Microsoft introduced a set of ActiveX controls called Office Web Components (OWC). The OWC Pivot tables are similar to Excel Pivot tables, but provide a slightly different range of functionality. We will use OWC Pivot tables shipped with Office 2003 for illustrations in this section along with Front Page 2003, which helps you to create web pages for your end users.

The OWC Pivot table provides end users the added flexibility to analyze data as compared to the Excel Pivot table, but has limited functionality with regards to formatting and reporting. With OWC Pivot tables you can easily identify the top or bottom values it provides you. There is a tight integration between Excel Pivot tables and OWC Pivot tables; they both provide the functionality of exporting data from one to another. There are two ways to create a web page using an OWC pivot table. The easiest way is to export an existing Excel pivot table. The following steps show you how to create an OWC pivot table from an existing pivot table:

1. Create an Excel pivot table with hierarchies and data in Excel. You can use the pivot table you created in the "Analyzing Data using Pivot Tables" section. Say, arranged like Figure 15-12.

2. In the File menu, select Save as Web Page. You will see the Save As dialog as shown in Figure 15-39. Assuming you have IIS (Internet Information Service) installed on your machine navigate to the folder Inetpub\wwwroot ...