In my previous blog post I checked what the key influencer is for having a lot of stock using PowerPivot and Predixion Insight for Excel. Now i want to see what the number of units on stock will do in the future. I want to see this by country for the next 6 months.
We start in Excel, i have again loaded the same tables as before into PowerPivot containing the Factinventory and a table containing country’s and stores. This time we are going to use PowerPivot indirect since the data in PowerPivot is not really suited for the Forecast, besides we want to use an aggregated value for this and not all individual 8 million records we used before.
Since this week the public beta of Predixion Software’s Data mining in the cloud for Excel is available. Those of you who are familiar with the the Microsoft SSAS Data mining Add-ins should be very comfortable with what is inside Predixion Data mining for Excel. I have done a previous blog post on doing data mining using PowerPivot with the MS data mining add-in where you can see how it currently works .
Predixion Insight for Excel is like a new version of the current SSAS add-in, the Predixion insight team consists of the folks that previously build the Add-in for MS and now started on their own.
The biggest change is that you no longer need an SSAS server installed. All action happens on the Predixion servers in the cloud. Second biggest (for me) is that you can use PowerPivot data as a datasource for you Data mining. Using it in combination with PowerPivot requires nothing more then Excel and a Predixion subscription for data mining. Furthermore the overal UI had been improved to make data mining a more user friendly experience. And it support 64 bits.
From the Predixion site:
Predixion’s intuitive and easy-to-use solution allows users to run predictive analytics in the familiar environments of Microsoft Excel® and PowerPivot. Whether you are an existing SQL Server® Data Mining user, a BI specialist or a newcomer to the arena of Predictive Analytics, Predixion Insight™ will enable you to easily create, manage and run powerful and accurate predictive models without extensive training or specific knowledge of the methodologies currently required to create successful predictive projects.
In this blog post we are going to see what are the key influencer are of the number of items on stock from the Contoso sample database.
I’m currently talking to a client who is very charmed by the possibilities of PowerPivot to analyze data, one thing led to another and we came to data mining .. I got thinking wouldn’t it be GREAT if we could use the Excel data mining add-in on PowerPivot data (with DAX at our disposal). After some sparring with Rob Collie I found a way! Which I am going to show to you today in this screencast.
Think about the possibilities we have, make some great calculations with DAX to make a calculated column or measures and then unleash the power of the data mining add ins !
A few prerequisites: since the data mining add-ins are 32-bits you have to install the 32 bits office 2010 with 32 bits PowerPivot. I hope they launch a 64 bits Excel 2010 version soon!
You have to have a SSAS (2005/2008 /2008R2) instance installed on your network, not the in memory PowerPivot instance but a regular version.
UPDATE: The SQL Server Data Mining team is working to extend the power and ease of use of SQL Server Data Mining to the Cloud. You can use this add-in to run datamining against a service in the cloud, you don’t need a SSAS instance installed ! Check it out on this page:http://www.sqlserverdatamining.com/cloud/
