Inserting a data source

In Analysis for Excel, data is displayed and analyzed in crosstab. To create a crosstab, first choose Insert Data Source from the Analysis ribbon. You then have three options:

• Select Data Source for Analysis . . .
• Select Data Source for Defining Formulas . . .
• Insert Anlaysis View . . .

When choosing Select Data Source for Analysis . . ., you select the appropriate connection to your source system and then browse in that system for the specific data source you want to analyze.

The result is a crosstab, usually with measures in the Columns and dimensions in the Rows.

When inserting a data source for defining formulas, you can use all data sources available to Analysis. But rather than the data appearing in a crosstab format, no crosstab is displayed. Instead, you can use formulas to design workbooks that do not adhere to the classic result set/crosstab based layout.

Note

Referencing and designing the layout of data using only formulas will most likely slow the performance of the workbook than the regular mode.

We will explore Analysis-specific formulas later in the course.

An Analysis view is the saved analysis state of what you see in a single crosstab, including any filtered data. You can save this state and use it as a data source for Analysis for Office as well as other SAP Analytics tools such as SAP Web Intelligence and SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise.

Note

Analysis views are saved only on the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform.