Visual Intelligence: Microsoft Tools and Techniques for Visualizing Data

Part II

Microsoft's Toolset for Visualizing Data

In this part

• Chapter 3: The Microsoft Toolset
• Chapter 4: Building Data Sets to Support Visualization
• Chapter 5: Excel and PowerPivot
• Chapter 6: Power View
• Chapter 7: PerformancePoint
• Chapter 8: Reporting Services
• Chapter 9: Custom Code

Chapter 3

The Microsoft Toolset

Microsoft was a late entry to the visualization market. Although it had a strong and early entry to the online analytical processing (OLAP) market, for the most part it relied on third-party vendors to do the front-end work and focused in the early days on the database work, allowing vendors such as Panorama and Proclarity to take the lead. More recently, as Microsoft wanted to take more control of the market, it started to develop and buy more of the front-end toolset. Microsoft’s purchase of Proclarity and later Report Builder marked a strong entry into the front-end market, but it was paralleled by a strong independent entry in the form of both strengthening the Excel visualization tools and developing a tool called Business Scorecard Manager (BSM), which evolved into PerformancePoint and was eventually subsumed into SharePoint as PerformancePoint services. Reporting Services, originally aimed squarely at the technical user from a developers' point of view, has evolved into a self-service tool aimed at the business user. In this chapter, you find out about the history of the Microsoft toolset and discover how each tool fits in the tool bag.

Microsoft purchased ...